Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
The price of a book is not now, nor has it EVER been, about the cost of printing -- nor of storage, nor of returns.
eBooks take out some of the cost of a book -- but not as much as people think. HOWEVER, that's still IRRELEVANT. The price was not EVER a function of the cost of making the book.
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But the pricing doesn't make any sense if you try to look at it in a logical way. Publishers refuse to give any kind of numbers. They have a system that has too many losses from returns. They give a very small percentage of the "value" of the book to the author because the costs are too big, and they give 50% discounts to big retailers. Ebooks could solve many problems, but the publishers refuse to see that.
And nobody seems to notice that from the whole list of complaints against ebooks there is one big thing that is missing: public domain books. They were making money from PD books, with no royalties, marketing, and if it was a reprint, even no editing. From any basic calculations you can deduce that they were making more/book than in the case of new books. But with ebooks, people are getting ereaders, and they don't need the publishers for this anymore. And there is always the possibility that more authors will self-publish, making the publishers completely obsolete.