NYT-article: costs pBook vs eBook

[SpecialEd]

Here´s an interesting article in The New York Times which compares the productions costs of traditional books and ebooks:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/bu...l?ref=business

[=X=]

Thanks for sharing. This is probably one of the better articles on the truth of book pricing there is.

Finally an admission that publishers are trying to stifle eBook growth by keeping prices of eBook over inflated.

An excellent point that was made was how ebooks are also charged with the overhead of paper books. Though this should not be the case it is a practice placed by The publisher. I don't think it is fair to load the cost to eBooks. Again this shows how publishers are resisting ebooks instead of innovating.

Originally Posted by =X=

Thanks for sharing. This is probably one of the better articles on the truth of book pricing there is.

Finally an admission that publishers are trying to stifle eBook growth by keeping prices of eBook over inflated.

An excellent point that was made was how ebooks are also charged with the overhead of paper books. Though this should not be the case it is a practice placed by The publisher. I don't think it is fair to load the cost to eBooks. Again this shows how publishers are resisting ebooks instead of innovating.

Not sure if I agree with all that. Now e-books make up such a small fraction of sales of books published in paper form by major publishers that one can arguably get away with not including the costs in going from the ideas in an authors head to a ready to publish and print work when doing the calculation of cost to produce the e-book. Many of these costs being fixed and not depending on total sales and will have to be accounted for whatever the output format. But there is no real justification for not spreading these costs among all formats as all formats need and benefit from it.

I definitely agree that the free market logic for e-book pricing is not yet there and will not be until e-books start to become a significant part of total sales.

Oh, I never cared for Ann Rice's work. Nice quote from her at the end though. The publishers will not be able to build a big and strong enough dam.

[Elfwreck]

Again, with the comparison to hardcovers, and no mention of out-of-print backlist or mmpbs.

[Kali Yuga]

This article is about a month old, and was already discussed at length.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75504

[SensualPoet]

I've never understood in these discussions why it seems to be a given that royalties for an e-book should be tied to hardcovers. It seems to me the royalties ought to be tied to the lowest medium at a point in time. So, during a hardcover window, royalties should match the hard-cover. When the mass or trade paper editions come out, then e-book royalties should drop to those levels. That alone would help drive e-book prices down to levels where some serious volume could be possible.

[whitearrow]

Yeah, none of what's in that article explains or excuses the practice of charging $9.99 for an ebook once a $7.99 paperback comes out. That's the part that drives me crazy -- not the $12.99 price when the hardcover is first released.