How much cost difference is there really?

[Morlac]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Is that $1 per book printed or sold? Also, what about shipping and warehouse costs?



Lets keep in mind though, that you are referring to text books, which are built around facts and also generally have a much more complicated layout than the average novel. A novel doesn't need the fact checker, and frankly, when I consider the layout in some novels, modern software can do as well if not better (And perhaps for some of these books, it already is doing that role).

Ultimately, though, I think that the costs can be trimmed quite a bit from many ebooks.

--
Bill

I'm referring only to the printing costs, not factoring in unsold copies or returns or warehousing or shipping because those things vary even more widely across sectors of publishing.

[EDIT: and yes, as someone just pointed out, I'm thinking in terms of paper not hardcover, which costs more.]

As for costs for novels versus academic books -- the numbers I tossed out are for my style of supplemental workbooks. They tend to be more complex layouts than a straight novel, true. But they are also much shorter -- half the page count or less -- with fewer words per page on average. So as a ballpark estimate I was assuming the various factors cancelled each other out. Similarly, a novel does not need fact checking per se, but also has considerably greater potential depth and breadth of editorial and proofreading concerns. ("Didn't the author say that Mr. Smith's first name was Bill, not Bob, about a hundred pages ago?") Whether a given publisher chooses to pursue those issues will vary.

And I agree with you that costs can be trimmed. But those costs will be trimmed by paying people -- our selves, colleagues, friends, and neighbors -- less money or eliminating their jobs entirely. And/or they will be trimmed by delivering a less polished product. I'm not saying that those things aren't inevitable, perhaps. But rushing toward the lowest possible cost of content has consequences that are often ignored. No such thing as a free lunch...

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Mare of Earth

I want to know why the ebook costs so much more

Inflated profits.

I want to know how much of the purchase price gets back to the author.

Probably the same as for the pBook.

[Morlac]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Another point that we, here, like to stress is many of those fixed costs to prepare an e-book should already be sunk costs in preparation of the p-book. If paperbacks cost significantly less than hardcovers we still expect e-books in today's market to cost something less than paperbacks. And we are often disappointed.

Yup -- I tried to convey that point in my post. Where I'm simply spreading my costs over more units sold, that's lovely. Unfortunately that's not always the case. In my situation, for example, I will have to decide whether to offer new books as e-only or print-only or both e- and print. If I choose something with an e-component I then have to decide on PDFs only or multiple formats, and whether or not to use some form of DRM. DRM costs money, but sales lost to piracy also cost money. PDFs are not the most attractive platform, but converting my books to anything else will be more expensive since they are already designed with PDFs in mind as what we deliver to the printer.

I'm not looking for sympathy -- this is, after all, my job. I'm just trying to get across some of the issues that publishers -- especially smaller ones -- have to face, since that seemed relevant to the topic of the thread. (And I take it not many publishers are all that forthcoming...). And hey, if you have great ideas on how to tackle my problems, I'd love to hear them!

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by Morlac

I
And I agree with you that costs can be trimmed. But those costs will be trimmed by paying people -- our selves, colleagues, friends, and neighbors -- less money or eliminating their jobs entirely. And/or they will be trimmed by delivering a less polished product. I'm not saying that those things aren't inevitable, perhaps. But rushing toward the lowest possible cost of content has consequences that are often ignored. No such thing as a free lunch...

Not to be snarky, but welcome to the world of capitalism. The rest of us have had to face these factors our entire careers. I would also point out that sometimes cost trimming actually has the opposite effect of delivering a more polished product.

Now, text books, are probably more subject to market forces than the average novel (after all, while there are differences in terms of quality and content, a 1st grade Math text book is in many ways going to be very much like any other 1st grade Math text book). Publishers have tended to escape the same rules that other industries have because if you want to read Harry Potter, you can't simply substitute a cheaper product.

--
Bill

[Morlac]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Not to be snarky, but welcome to the world of capitalism. The rest of us have had to face these factors our entire careers. I would also point out that sometimes cost trimming actually has the opposite effect of delivering a more polished product.

Now, text books, are probably more subject to market forces than the average novel (after all, while there are differences in terms of quality and content, a 1st grade Math text book is in many ways going to be very much like any other 1st grade Math text book). Publishers have tended to escape the same rules that other industries have because if you want to read Harry Potter, you can't simply substitute a cheaper product.
--
Bill

As a 40-something person who has worked at lots of different places in various jobs, both hiring/firing and being hired/fired, and occasionally having the company bought out or fail beneath him, I don't need to be welcomed to capitalism. I, too, have been living it all my life. Just saying "not to be snarky" rarely makes such a comment seem less snarky to the recipient, Bill.

I never said I'm against capitalism. If anything, I'd be in favor of *more* capitalism rather than less, in the sense that there are a variety of factors that tend to work toward insulating big companies from the full effect of their bad business decisions.

But that's way off topic. I stand by my original point, which is that setting "the right" e-book prices, formats, and DRM are not necessarily as easy or straightforward as is sometimes portrayed. The usual answers I've been seeing, by the way, seem to be: price = heavily discounted, formats = every format, DRM = none. I guess my implicit second point would be that at least some publishers are listening and thinking about the issues and trying to make good decisions. Helpful feedback and thoughtful discussion are therefore much appreciated.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Morlac

I'm referring only to the printing costs, not factoring in unsold copies or returns or warehousing or shipping because those things vary even more widely across sectors of publishing.

[EDIT: and yes, as someone just pointed out, I'm thinking in terms of paper not hardcover, which costs more.]

As for costs for novels versus academic books -- the numbers I tossed out are for my style of supplemental workbooks. They tend to be more complex layouts than a straight novel, true. But they are also much shorter -- half the page count or less -- with fewer words per page on average. So as a ballpark estimate I was assuming the various factors cancelled each other out. Similarly, a novel does not need fact checking per se, but also has considerably greater potential depth and breadth of editorial and proofreading concerns. ("Didn't the author say that Mr. Smith's first name was Bill, not Bob, about a hundred pages ago?") Whether a given publisher chooses to pursue those issues will vary.

And I agree with you that costs can be trimmed. But those costs will be trimmed by paying people -- our selves, colleagues, friends, and neighbors -- less money or eliminating their jobs entirely. And/or they will be trimmed by delivering a less polished product. I'm not saying that those things aren't inevitable, perhaps. But rushing toward the lowest possible cost of content has consequences that are often ignored. No such thing as a free lunch...

You forgot to factor in the cost of all of those wraskely bookcases.

[Mare of Earth]

This is exactly the kind of information I want. I want to know why an ebook costs the same as a hardcover, or costs less than a paperback.

Also, what is the cost comparison of physical retail space vs. digital retail space?

This thread has brought up many interesting aspects of publishing that most of us don't know to consider when looking at the end price of an ebook.

[wodin]

I'm talking about those wraskely bookcases at home. My wife is a avid pbook collector, and we have a about a dozen bookcases, all full, cluttering up the house.

[Penforhire]

Morlac, I do have sympathy but you should recognize that DRM as a method to prevent piracy is a failure. If someone wants to pirate your books they can do so off the sweat of some hacker's brow followed by the least of efforts from a file sharer.

We do not go into the distribution channels of piracy here but if someone does not want to pay for an e-book the addition of DRM does not delay its availability to anyone with an internet connection. And some of those exchange channels are easier to use than some on-line e-book stores! DRM is a more significant annoyance to legitimate buyers, not being able to read their e-books on a different device or after a DRM server fails.

[Morlac]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Morlac, I do have sympathy but you should recognize that DRM as a method to prevent piracy is a failure. If someone wants to pirate your books they can do so off the sweat of some hacker's brow followed by the least of efforts from a file sharer.

We do not go into the distribution channels of piracy here but if someone does not want to pay for an e-book the addition of DRM does not delay its availability to anyone with an internet connection. And some of those exchange channels are easier to use than some on-line e-book stores! DRM is a more significant annoyance to legitimate buyers, not being able to read their e-books on a different device or after a DRM server fails.

Oh, I completely recognize that as a fact. I fully recognize that no DRM solution will stop determined pirates and that most DRM annoys the user and costs the publisher even more money upfront.

I'm not looking to stop that kind of pirate. We sell to teachers, who are not really as likely, generally, to rush off to download materials for classroom use off the darknet or the latest torrents. However, there are a significant minority of educators who feel that photocopying whole books for each student is fair use. So I am considering the pros and cons of trying to discourage casual, "opportunistic" piracy.

For example, if I sell PDFs that I try to make uncopyable, *most* of those who would casually try to copy will simply say "oh, guess I can't do that." Of course, that's also going to annoy the folks who bought the book and want to transfer it to another computer for a perfectly valid reason.

For that same balancing act reasoning, I would probably NOT want to make such a PDF of our books unprintable. There's too many times when the teacher will have a reason to want to print something out and be frustrated by the blockage.

[fugazied]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

It is estimated that an ebook only costs 12-15% less to produce than a paper book.

However the retailer now has more server maintenance, higher bandwidth costs, more IT staffing, more backups etc.

The thing about costs for virtual devices is that it doesn't scale like print book costs do. You have costs setting up a server, but then you can store 10'000 ebooks on it. A print book contains a paper cost for every book, the server cost dilutes drastically as you add more titles and more ebooks are sold.

Also there are third parties who provide such infrastructure. The publishers don't need their own server farm, they could store ebooks on Amazon data storage. Hell I store 10 GB on Amazon servers for $2 a month. You can't tell me server costs are close to print costs for all of those books. Also the IT teams for these companies would probably be 10-20 guys. Compare that cost to the overheads on EVERY printed book.

I think the bottom line is that publishers prefer printed books because they are terrified of how to stop people copying/distrbuting ebooks on the Internet.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by fugazied

I think the bottom line is that publishers prefer printed books because they are terrified of how to stop people copying/distrbuting ebooks on the Internet.

Ignorance is bliss, and until it is overwhelmingly demonstrated that profits are higher for ebooks than for pbooks, the paranoia will persist.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by fugazied

I think the bottom line is that publishers prefer printed books because they are terrified of how to stop people copying/distrbuting ebooks on the Internet.

Except of course printed books don't stop it. Many (most?) pirated books are scan/ocr's of pbooks.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Except of course printed books don't stop it. Many (most?) pirated books are scan/ocr's of pbooks.

Which are likely to be cutting into printed book sales, part of which could be recouped if they offered an eBook.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Which are likely to be cutting into printed book sales, part of which could be recouped if they offered an eBook.