07-26-2011, 08:26 AM | #76 | ||
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Thanks to everyone for sharing their thoughts.
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BTW: I should also state that I know costs for an eBook are not zero. I don't know too much about the ins and outs of how it works, but as a programmer I know a lot of the text is already coming from the author in digital form, but I understand that there is probably a technical department somewhere paying their IT staff a salary and charging X amount of dollars for the production of this book. I can't imagine it is that much though. |
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07-26-2011, 08:53 AM | #77 |
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Fountain soda is cheaper to produce than canned or bottled soda. I wonder why the customer always ends up paying more for it? Oh I remember now... it's because costs aren't always in a 1:1 ratio with value and price.
People can talk about what ebooks should cost until they're blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is... they will always cost exactly what the majority of people are willing to pay for them. They may get a little cheaper, but they're never going to get anywhere near their production costs. |
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07-26-2011, 10:36 AM | #78 | |
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Carol |
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07-26-2011, 10:58 AM | #79 | ||
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07-26-2011, 11:14 AM | #80 | |
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Out of curiosity, did you have to 'dismantle' the physical book to scan it, or is the process akin to copying facing book pages on a regular copy machine? Thanks! |
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07-26-2011, 12:56 PM | #81 | |
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But there are people who scan them without breaking the original, either by pressing them flat to a copier/scanner, or using the diybookscanner arrangement. (I had the advantage of several years at a job where we were hired to chop & scan books & magazines; I got over my aversions to damaging perfectly good books.) I still keep them, rubberbanded with the spines, and have considered using plastic comb binding to reassemble them into usable books. |
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07-26-2011, 02:03 PM | #82 |
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I just wanted to refloat the 1st post by DiapDealer (i always read Diaper in your name ).
You are paying for what the product costs (the words, creativity?); the paper, the hard covers, the little front photo its just means to an end. The fact that there is different media to get it, doesn't means you are entitled to get the other media formats for free (silly you!). But, as has been brought on the topic, it would be amazing to be able to have a package discount for purchasing hard+digital format copies. Complete economic offtopic: An economic transaction takes place when someone is willing to exchange his product for the right price, while the buyer is willing to exchange X amount of money (product satisfaction) for the product. |
07-26-2011, 05:19 PM | #83 | |
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Sir, I must also ask. Id like to scan some of my own books and tried it once before, it took me forever to get one page done. Then again I had to bend the book in half and scan the same page over and over until it came out right, I have a printer / scanner. Im sure Im doing this wrong. What kind of scanner do you use? What program do you use? Where can I get both? Could you provide any and all information to help me on this? Please, I cant tell you how grateful I would be. Last edited by NVash; 07-26-2011 at 05:28 PM. |
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07-26-2011, 05:25 PM | #84 |
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I use an OpticBook 3600 scanner. It scans to within a quarter inch on one side, so you put one page down flat, scan, then flip the book around to get the other page - it's upside down, but the software takes care of that. Then turn the page and repeat. I can do a 250 page book in less than an hour.
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07-26-2011, 06:38 PM | #85 | |
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That said, "fixed" costs can still get expensive quick, and so price can't be based entirely on per-unit costs or you go under quick. The publisher's staff, any marketing they push into the project, the cost of the editor(s) involved, author advance, and so on add up quick. And you have books that don't always earn enough to make back what was spent, due to risks that are inherent in the industry (there is a limit to how much you can predict that a book will sell). Although what the reduced costs of printing/etc really get the publisher is less up-front risk. If I publish an e-book, I'm out the editing costs/etc same as a printed book. What I do gain is that I don't also have to assume the risk of printing some copies at some cost, and then hoping I can sell all the copies I made. With an e-book, the per unit costs can be paid as the book sells to some extent (as long as your total volume makes the hosting affordable), which is a better arrangement than having to manage stock levels. As long as I handle a large enough total volume, I can reason that books with very limited appeal might be easier to take a chance on, as I don't have to deal with a minimum print run size. This actually is healthier for the publishing industry as a whole, as it means I can take a larger number of smaller risks and more authors get a chance to be published with the help of people who know editing/marketing/etc. I still have to find a way for these small runs to pay for themselves as much as possible though, and that means higher pricing, offsetting some of the initial printing cost savings I may have had. Plus, if I'm bleeding red, I need to raise prices, or I offer eBooks at the same price to increase margins a bit. There aren't many business plans where you can cut prices and increase profits without also cutting costs even more deeply than the price. EDIT: Fun fact... printing accounts for ~10% of list price. So on a book that lists for about 10$, the eBook savings are ~1$ on printing (- cost of a formatter/etc to put manuscript into ePub/etc). Distribution is another 10% (and bandwidth/etc offsets those savings). In reality, the savings from going to eBooks are less than 20-30% of the list price (note that many retailers already cut off that much from the list price on printed books). How much less, I'm not sure. And the agency model prevents companies like Amazon from effectively cutting into their 30% of the pricing to offer loss-leader deals and the like. Last edited by Kolenka; 07-26-2011 at 06:47 PM. |
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07-26-2011, 07:24 PM | #86 | |
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Many copy shops have one; they're not recommended for the home office unless you chop up a *lot* of stacks of paper. For profit, because they're really not worth having for occasional home use. Other people use a razor or exacto blade and a ruler and cut through books page-by-page. Home all-in-one print/scan/copy machines are awful for scanning. The software tends to be very limited, and assumes you want to scan one page at a time--like a letter and envelope; it's not designed to scan hundreds of pages one after the other. (Doesn't mean it won't work but there's often no shortcuts built in for bulk scanning.) I usually scan with Acrobat Pro; sometimes I use Photoshop. Sometimes I scan straight to Abbyy Finereader. (Those probably aren't helpful.) Irfanview has scan settings, and scan-batch settings, and it's free & open source. I use two scanners at home: a Canon LIDE 30 for flatbed things (it's out of production, but I'm sure there's some obviously similar newer scanner); it's USB powered and tiny. I have a Fujitsu duplex scanner for everything else; I don't remember the model number but it's the predecessor to the ScanSnap, which is better. (And available. And comes with a version of FineReader if you buy it new, which is great.) Scanning flatbed without chopping the spines off is time-consuming and takes practice to learn the tricks. (Or you can go the diyscanner route, and set up a v-shaped "platform" with two digital cameras aiming at the pages.) For flatbed, you have to be able to press the book down firmly enough to have all the text clearly against the glass; some print/scan machines are too fragile to do that with all books. The Opticbook is a good option; it's got an edge designed for putting half a book over so it doesn't have to lie completely flat. I haven't had access to one so I can't speak to its abilities directly, but it seems to fix exactly the problems with most flatbed scanners. |
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07-26-2011, 07:40 PM | #87 |
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pholy and Elfwreck, I appreciate it. Would you mind if I PMed either of you for help or advice once I get a scanner together? No cash to do it right now but Im sure Ill have more questions later on down the road. |
07-26-2011, 08:00 PM | #88 | |
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07-26-2011, 08:26 PM | #89 |
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I am just looking at my Logic textbook now and wondering how soon I can get to a decent scanner and get some of it on my laptop! I have no moral outrage at doing this - the book is huge and is not available in ebook format. Why should I further wreck my my already weak and damaged shoulder lugging it around? But I would have paid a few dollars more to get a digital copy to go with the textbook ((just to cover the CD cost and packaging). A tiered pricing structure would help here - one price for a p book, slightly more for p and e book combined, a lot less for only ebook (especially if it is DRM'd) .
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07-26-2011, 08:36 PM | #90 | ||
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