|
The discussions don't mention that the major up-front costs for editing & formatting happen once per title, with minor touchups per format (hcover, pback, ebook). And while those costs shouldn't be "absorbed into the hardcover," they're also not repeated for the ebook edition. I suspect publishers released estimates of how much it costs to produce a book assume starting from scratch, as if producing that format only.
For any backlist edition, the editing & formatting has already been done. The ebook needs OCR correction, but that's not anywhere near as time-consuming as formatting the original book, and there's no editing at all.
For ebooks released alongside (or a bit later than) print editions, the editing costs, again, have already been done. That doesn't mean they're "free" in the ebook edition--but it means the publisher should be spreading those costs among several formats, thus bringing down the cost-per-book for production. I'm not seeing any signs publishers admit that it costs less per book to make hardcover-plus-ebook releases.
|