Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
No one is claiming the creation of an ebook is a huge expense, in the sense of what is needed to get a final electronic manuscript into an ebook format. The claim is simply that most of the costs of producing a book occur before it ever reaches the stage of being published in any form.
What happens if the ebook is the only edition? A lot of this discussion seems to assume the paper editions are somehow subsidizing the ebook. What happens when there is no paper edition to share the burden of the costs?
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And I think this is the key point. Yes, to create an ebook from an electronic copy of the final manuscript is not such a big deal. But what happens when the pbook market falls and ebooks are the dominant force? Should they then shift all the overhead to the ebook creation and sell the pbook at a fraction of current prices? If the publishers drop prices drastically for ebooks now, they won't be able to raise them later without huge consumer backlash.
That said, as a consumer, if I'm going to pay the same amount for an ebook that I would for the pbook, it must have ALL the functionality of a pbook, including be able to lend it to my friends or sell it used. There's going to have to be some pricing trade-off for the reduced functionality and the DRM. (Which is funny, because I'm sure it costs the publishers a bunch of money to add DRM…)