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With you just a bit there, Harry. But with ebooks now hitting treebook profits to an extent, some fixed overheads must be shared by the two presentation platforms.
I agree that ebooks should be hugely cheaper than their paper alternatives for reasons we all know. My own wee house has a fixed price of $5.99 (representing usually about half or a third of treebook price) because print cover price is carefully calculated on page count and resulting print cost. We don't have the same costing restraints with ebooks.
Whether the book is 250 pages or 500, the difference in production cost is zero (apart from extra editorial and technical time in-house). Sleep safe. I really do believe the major houses will cotton on to this before long and price accordingly. Competition will force that as the market becomes bigger and more savvy.
And, just as an aside, I don't think publishers should be so mean with author royalties when it comes to ebooks. Because production and distribution is so low, there is no excuse for anything less than 40%, even from a full-service publisher like us.
Cheers. Neil
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