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Originally Posted by queentess
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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. |
If the pbook market falls that badly, there may not
be pbooks. Pbooks
won't be sold at a fraction of current prices. Trying to do so would be like the old joke about "losing money on every sale, but making it up on volume!" All you do there is increase your losses.
If anything, p-book prices will
increase. Economies of scale are in play. With a physical printed book, the more copies you print, the less the cost of producing each is, and the more you can spread the total manufacturing cost. It's why niche market and specialty books tend to have higher prices: the number of copies that will be sold is far lower, and the production cost for each book is much higher.
But it's one reason why we aren't likely to see the sort of ebook pricing a lot of folks hope for. Smart publishers will be looking ahead to the days when ebooks dominate, and
any vendor will want to charge as much as can be gotten for what she makes and sells. The underlying costs of making a book don't magically decrease that much just because it's electronic instead of paper - 80% of them are there regardless.
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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…)
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It costs the publishers
something to add DRM, as they probably license the technology, but I doubt it's a significant cost per book.
Lending and reselling ebooks are thorny issues, and I've no idea how they might be addressed.
When you lend a pbook, while it's out on loan,
you don't have it. Only one person can read it at a time. With an ebook, that's a lot harder to implement. Barnes and Noble has a lending function on their nook reader - you can lend an ebook to another nook owner for a two week period. But while it's on loan,
you can't access it, just like a pbook. It can be done because both devices are nooks and on B&N's network. It can't work otherwise.
Resale is likewise. If you sell your pbook,
you no longer have it. How do you implement that for resale on an ebook? You need a method whereby selling your used copy erases if from your device (and prevents you from restoring it from a backup, as you no longer have the right to display it.) I don't know a way to do that, and I can only imagine the howls of protest from people who read ebooks about any proposal that might accomplish it. What would be required would be far too intrusive for anyone's comfort.
Speaking personally, I occasionally lend pbooks, but don't resell them. Books I actually buy, I plan to
keep. I do occasionally give away things I've accumulated duplicate copies of ("Free to good home!"
), so inability to do either with an ebook is not a factor in my decision.
The more interesting question for me is how much price is a factor. Books compete for the reader's discretionary
time as well as money. Reading is by nature a foreground activity, and what you must concentrate on while you do it. Books must battle for attention with all the other things you might be doing, like watching TV. Ebooks make it convenient for people to read anywhere, any time, in odd moments like during a commute, and increase the total number they
can read by some measurable amount, but there will still be limits on how many the average reader will have time to read. The scarce resource here isn't money to buy the books, it's time to read them once I have.
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Dennis