Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
A publisher, however, will know with a reasonable degree of accuracy how many copies of a book it is likely to sell. Prices have to set to recover all the "up front" costs for the book - editing, publicity, and so on and so forth - and to make a reasonable profit on top of that. Printing is a very, very minor component of the cost of a book (for a paperback novel, at least); the overwhelming majority of the costs of book production apply to an eBook just as they do to a paper book.
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a) "A publisher, however, will know with a reasonable degree of accuracy how many copies of a book it is likely to sell" ...
at a certain price
At a lower price they will sell more. That is why they print hardback, trade then mass market, to maximise sales at each price.
eBooks are not an essential purchase, they are discretionary. The number of copies you sell depends on the price you charge.
The Stieg Larsson books have sold millions of Kindle copies. The Stieg Larsson books are priced below the 'standard' eBook price. I do not think these two facts are unrelated.
To take an example in a different field, GoodReader is a fantastic app for the iPhone/iPad, and it is a no-brainer purchase for all users. If it were priced at $10 rather than $1, the first would still be true, the second wouldn't. They would sell far fewer copies, and I'm guessing would make far less overall profit.
b) The costs you list are all fixed costs, not variable, they do not increase if you sell more books. The cost per book decreases if you sell more books.
c) I am not saying there is no cost to produce the book. I am saying there is (almost) no fixed 'cost price' that one can sell above or below. This is different to a pBook, where there in an actual cost of printing, shipping and storing the actual copy that gets sold, and those costs impose a floor on the price that can be charged and still make a profit on the sale.
The equivalent for an eBook would be the bandwidth cost (tiny) and the payment processing fees (not tiny), and might create an effective floor at around $1. (This is the minimum that SmashWords will let you charge, for these reasons) As micropayments become more efficient this floor should lower.