Quote:
Originally Posted by HamsterRage
Interesting, but we've never seen the price of books drop, or even a decrease in the rate at which the prices are increasing due to all of these "huge leaps in productivity".
|
Most literary first novels net between 3,000 and 7,000 hardcover copies. Source:
here.
There is a lot of human work hours involved in producing a book. For example, the most basic proofreading of a book that is 100K words long normally requires at least 100 hours. Sometimes there are several rounds of editing, then final proofreading, formatting, illustrations, covers, typesetting etc. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to properly publish a book. All done by educated professionals who demand to be well paid because unlike authors they don't get royalties. If it takes 300 hours (low estimate) on proofreading and editing, formatting, typesetting etc., it will cost a publishing house about $15,000.
Add advance to author, royalties, agent's cut etc and considering unpredictability of actual sales, it is not possible to sell books for $3 and make a profit in most cases.
I think that the figure that paper and printing comprises only 10% of the total price is more or less correct. Big companies try to squeeze even that price down but it is not a wonder that they consider e-books unimportant from the cost saving point. The change in distribution model and pricing strategy is much bigger headache for publishers.