MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - People who want no DRM are impractical dreamers...

HansTWN · 03-24-2011, 05:09 AM

Then I am asking you, what would happen to their pbook business? They would also have to sell those for extremely low amounts (or nobody would buy them) -- and they would all go out of business. Sounds great for users, but publishers and book sellers could not operate this way.

Such low prices can only work for a self publishing author with sales on the web only. Or as a promotion. The costs incurred to make one additional unit is totally irrelevant for the pricing of digital goods. Besides, why should we care about costs, what matters is how much are we willing to pay and is anyone willing to sell at that price. For the publisher the point is, total sales volume has to be high enough to cover development, production, distribution costs AND to make a reasonable profit. Even for ebooks there are distribution costs such as advertising.

We can go on and on about "ebooks cost virtually nothing to make", what does it matter if nobody is willing to sell them for next to nothing?

03-24-2011, 05:09 AM	#443
HansTWN Wizard Posts: 4,538 Karma: 264065402 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Taiwan Device: HP Touchpad, Sony Duo 13, Lumia 920, Kobo Aura HD	Then I am asking you, what would happen to their pbook business? They would also have to sell those for extremely low amounts (or nobody would buy them) -- and they would all go out of business. Sounds great for users, but publishers and book sellers could not operate this way. Such low prices can only work for a self publishing author with sales on the web only. Or as a promotion. The costs incurred to make one additional unit is totally irrelevant for the pricing of digital goods. Besides, why should we care about costs, what matters is how much are we willing to pay and is anyone willing to sell at that price. For the publisher the point is, total sales volume has to be high enough to cover development, production, distribution costs AND to make a reasonable profit. Even for ebooks there are distribution costs such as advertising. We can go on and on about "ebooks cost virtually nothing to make", what does it matter if nobody is willing to sell them for next to nothing? Last edited by HansTWN; 03-24-2011 at 05:12 AM.