Quote:
Originally Posted by Kris777
I cannot agree with it. What about cost of paper, printing, delivery, distribution? Publishers just want to get extra profit from ebooks...
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I fully agree with this. Yes, there is a "value" to every book. But then there is also a realistic cost, and more times than not, the "value" of a book is widely disproportional to the actual cost of it. First there are one time costs which are figured into the short term life of the book (2 years typically). Then there are recurring costs of marketing, maintenance (not download cost, but rather the cost of personnel to monitor the books, make changes, adjust prices, monitor feedback, etc.), overhead (every book has that figured into it), author royalty, distribution costs (IE, Amazon's "per sale" fee for example), and other such expenses.
So on an ebook, the cost of doing this can be upwards of 95% of the shelf price for the ebook over the baseline 2 year run period, which then drops proportionally (both price and cost) over time as the book ages and less money is put into it. However, interestingly enough, this rule of 95% only applies to big houses, as they tend to have a LOT of overhead. Now small house press on the other hand have a much smaller cost baseline, as they are obviously smaller in size with considerably less overhead.
So for a small house, the average overhead for a book is somewhere between 35% and 55% on average depending on a wide range of factors. 75% would be the extreme top end. So for a $10 book, the big houses would spend $3.50 on delivery (ie, amazon sales fee for example), and $6 on other expenses leaving just 50c for profit. Now a small press on the other hand might only have $2-$3 in expenses per ebook sold, meaning they can rake in $3-$4 per ebook. That $3-$4 will also go a LOT farther than it will in a big house.
So in short, the big houses actually hurt themselves by being as big as they are, because it's considerably more expensive to run their operations. Yes, they get economies of scale that small house presses don't, which makes them the preferred publishing means for raw profits on print items. But when it comes to digital media, small house presses beat them hands down and then some.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thinkpadx
Recently I've been buying most of my e-books from Baen and Smashwords. Amazon has gotten very little of my money.
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I hope that Amazon continues to get less and less of people's money. They're one company that I won't lose sleep over should they fold some day. In fact, I'd probably pop a bottle of champaign and celebrate. But alas, there are too many gullible people who fall for their schemes.