Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
The majority of the costs of producing any book happen before it ever reaches the stage of being published, in print or electronic form. Dropping the costs inherent in a print edition doesn't provide anywhere near the saving most folks would like to believe.
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But those costs are not per unit. They are spread across the total of the number of books sold. Increase the number of books sold, and those costs per unit go waaaay down. The best way to increase the number of units is to drop the price. The unit cost of an eBook is lower already, so you can drop the unit price, increase sales (which dilutes the creation costs), and therefore drop prices even more.
The article seems to say the total costs for all those steps is about $20,000 (top end of their range), so unless the book sells fewer than 20,000 units, those costs will be less than $1 per book. If the book gets up to 100,000 units, it will be $0.20 per book. Bestsellers with over a million sold? That would be a stunning $0.02 per book.
And that's my $0.02 on the topic.