Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
They have a point. Most of the costs of any book are incurred before the print, bind, warehouse, and distribute stage. (An editor I know estimates printing, binding, and distribution of the average book at about 10% of the total book budget. He's seen the numbers and has no reason to lie about it.) The cost savings a lot of folks expect because an ebook doesn't have printing, binding, warehousing and distribution costs aren't anywhere near as great as a lot of folks would like to believe, and there will be definite limits (that will vary by the book) on how cheap an ebook can be and make any money.
The average price of a mass market paperback is about $8 at the moment. If a publisher can sell an ebook edition at $10-$15 dollars instead, I'm sure they'll be delighted to. But they won't want to sell it instead of the new hardcover release, unless the pricing is such that they aren't losing significant revenue in doing so. That's what the Agency Model was all about.
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Dennis
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I agree their production costs are probably not a big factor, but their ridiculous business model of 100% return is where they really get hurt. Also, I suspect they come up with an initial production run based on their knowledge of typical sales for hardcovers of a particular best selling author, thus creating a fixed investment in the product. I suspect the eBooks were reducing the numbers for that fixed production run, thus requiring them to "buy back" the excess inventory. If not, then this whole argument is moot since the eBooks were icing above and beyond the initial production run. This "extra" cost due to their bad business model is what eBooks don't have, thus making eBooks a better margin product in the long run.