[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

These three are per-unit costs: the more units produced, the more manufacturing, warehousing & distribution costs. (Perhaps it's "per crate" rather than "per unit;" shipping differences between 1000 books and 1005 may be nothing, but there are cost differences between shipping 1000 and 2000 books.)

Not significant ones, in terms of affecting the total cost or what price you charge.

Yes--but it's *per title*, not per unit. The editing & formatting cost the same whether the publisher sells 1500 copies or 15000. And while costs-per-title vary, they can be averaged by a publisher, at least across individual genres.

Can be, yes, but probably aren't.

I very much doubt that Tor, for instance, who published the best selling Wheel of Time fantasy series, averages it's numbers in with all of the other fantasy they publish. If averaging is done, it will likely be done on books with comparable sale volume.

I want the cost estimates released by publishers to say what print run they're assuming for the "$.80 per book" editing and formatting costs. Because if they sell three times as many as they expect, those costs are lower.

"Oh frabjous day, callooh, callay!" if they do, but so what? You run your numbers, figure your costs, and calculate your price and your anticipated revenue and profit based on what you expect to sell. If you do three times as well as expected, you smile happily and maybe break out the champagne, but you can't assume those numbers going in.

However, if the book is being released in both formats, they don't need to be done *twice.* A small bit of formatting is done differently for the two versions (just as it's done differently for hardcover & paperback release), but the main editing & proofreading work is done only once; estimated costs for that shouldn't be duplicated for both pbook and ebook.

No, they won't be duplicated. But the ebook will not be considered to be a free by-product of the work done for the paper edition. It will be expected to generate revenue and bear a share of the total costs and overhead.

And what happens in the case where the ebook is the only edition?

But an ebook doesn't have extra production costs if it turns out popular and sells 2X copies. Its cost-per-sale for editing, overhead & advances drop at that point.

Yes, but the same comments above apply. You're happy if it does, but that doesn't affect your revenue and expense estimates

Baen has found a way to cut costs and effectively market ebooks, and these methods are inapplicable to other companies? Other publishers are incapable of finding lower rents, hiring contractors, and cultivating loyal customers?

Incapable? Maybe. We are certainly seeing wrenching readjustments, as houses merge, imprints are folded, and waves of layoffs occur. Too many books are chasing too few readers, and the number of people needed to produce the number of books that can be effectively sold is rather less than the number currently doing it.

I certainly don't see the publishing industry all picking up and moving out of NYC to lower rent districts.

I'm aware not every publisher can or should copy all of Baen's methods, but saying "Baen is only successful because they found a way to make ebooks cheaper" is not convincing me that the Big 6 are doing things right. What, Random House can't hire independent contractors to do their ebook conversions?

They may well be doing so. But that, alone, will not be significant.

The point I was making is that, according to the "compare ebook to pbook costs" lists given by mainstream publishers, Baen should be bankrupt. They're selling ebooks below the cost the big publishers claim it takes to produce them. So obviously, those aren't anything like absolute costs of ebook production; they're the cost of inefficient ebook production. (Also, I notice they don't directly mention the cost of adding DRM.) I'm not sympathetic to publishers that say "we have to charge this much for ebooks because we can't be bothered to find a better way to make them."

You can't compare Baen to the mainstream publishers. Their business model and cost structure is different. Obviously, they aren't bankrupt. (And the last I knew had a 70% hardcover sell through rate.)

But my underlying point is simple: 80% of the costs of producing a book occur before the book ever reaches the stage of being printed bound and distributed or issued as an ebook, and the savings of not having the print/bind/warehouse/ship steps aren't as great as most folks would like the believe. There will be limits on how cheap you can price an ebook and make any money.

Baen does well on the Webscriptions stuff, but Baen also has healthy hardcover sales and paperback sales good enough to keep doing them. Could Baen survive on only the ebook sales? I very much doubt it.
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Dennis