[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Based on what I was told about the production costs on my E-reads titles, some of which were created by the above method, it probably costs $500-$1000 to do the scanning, the OCR, the proofing and correcting, the markup, the cover, and all the other ancillary costs to produce an ebook for professional distribution. (Depending on the length of the book and probably other factors.)

The biggest factor I can think of offhand will be the size of the company doing it. Big companies have big overhead. It simply costs them more to do anything.

Now consider what Dennis said about considering whether they'll make a profit. This assumes the publisher has the ebook rights to begin with.

And in many cases, they won't. These days, electronic rights are a separate area of the contract. In earlier days, they weren't mentioned at all, because ebooks didn't exist. The publisher bought the rights to issue paper volumes, and the fact they they hold the rights to the paper volume does not mean they have electronic rights.

I got personally involved in the creation of my own backlist ebooks. Many writers don't have the interest, the knowledge, or the time. I think that's changing.

I think so, too. And I see an emerging group appearing who offer publishing services to writers with backlist books, who would like to offer electronic editions, but don't have the time or knowledge to do it themselves.
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Dennis