[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JeremyR

This is just going to drive people to pirate their books.

Looking at the list by Mr. Stross, no wonder they can't make money, the industry is really bloated. And much of that list doesn't seem to apply to e-books, even though he claims only 14-16 don't apply.

Oh, dear. Where to begin...

4) Marketing (buy ads and displays in stores). Not needed for ebooks

Dream on. Marketing is a catch all term for letting the readers know books they might want to buy and read exist. It extends far beyond things like plus fours and POP displays in retailers, and is probably even more critical for ebooks than for print editions.

5) Scheduling (so they don't flood bookstores). Perhaps needed, you don't want 500 e-books in the same month, then 2 a next. But then again, not as badly.

eBooks ease scheduling concerns, but do not eliminate them. Scheduling is still critical. Remember, every book goes through a production process, some of which was outlined by Stross. A publisher can only work on so many titles at any one time. Decisions have to be made about which titles are worked on in what order.

8) Advance Reader Copies (is this really necessary? And if anything, this can be sold to people like Baen does)

Advance Reader Copies are what is also known as "galley proofs". They are the quality control stage before publication, to catch errors missed earlier in the process. They are what gets sent to the author for review before publication, for example. (And I've heard some classic stories about what happened when it was.) They exist for ebooks, too. Baen makes a few extra bucks by selling theirs to folks who want to read the book now and will tolerate errors to get faster access, but the rest of the market has higher standards.

9) Book design, cover design, front and back flap copy, and cover artwork (While it can apply to e-books, it mostly doesn't as many publishers don't even bother with a cover).

I'm not sure which publisher's ebooks you buy, but the ones I have have cover art. And while you may be willing to do without it on an ebook (I'm not), that cover art still has a crucial purpose, and the same purpose it serves in print editions: to sell the book.

On a printed book, the job of the cover is to catch the eye of the browser in the bookstore, and get them to pick the book off the shelf for a closer look, as the first step in making the sale. The cover has the same purpose in a ebook offered on a web site: an arresting image to get you to take a closer look.

10) CEM delivered to Typesetting (as e-books aren't typeset, you don't need this)

eBooks are most certainly typeset. They fact that the device you use may have a limited subset of fonts it can display does not remove the need to do typesetting.

The preset workflow is that publishers get manuscripts as Word documents, and edit them to reach an approved final form for publishing. The final form gets imported to Adobe InDesign for typesetting and markup. Cover art and design, jacket copy and the like are also imported. The output from InDesign is a PDF file which the printer feeds to an imagesetter to create the plates from which the book will be printed.

If an electronic edition is produced, it will be an additional step in the process. If the eBook file is a PDF, the same typesetting for the print edition can be used, as the PDF can have the required fonts embedded, and display them as they would appear in the printed book. If the output is a MobiPocket, ePub, or other file, there must still be consideration of how the target device will display the book and what capabilities it has to do so.

11) Marketing copy (okay, sure). But you don't need to print them up.

You don't? Well, if you don't care whether the folks it's aimed at actually read it, I suppose not. But too many of the intended audience for that stuff still expects hardcopy.

12) Review page proofs (PDF from hardcopy, this is done to catch the errors that crept in during test runs of printing). Not needed for e-books.

You don't need to review hardcopy page proofs in ebooks, but you do need to review proofs. See above about the need for ARCs.

13) Collate advance orders and order the print run. Not needed for e-books

No, but there will still be a need to estimate how many copies the ebook will sell.

17) Invoicing and accounting. Sure, if you have hundreds of bookstores this could get hairy. But there's what, maybe half a dozen e-book sellers? A dozen?

A few hundred? Absolutely necessary, one way or the other, but simplified with ebooks.

So basically it seems like the publishers are still using the same costs and procedures for e-books as printed books, even though they aren't ncessary. I guess because they don't consider them separate products, but merely an extension of an existing one.

Correct. eBooks are simply another format in which books are issued. When a publisher acquires a manuscript, they will acquire various rights, which may include hardcover edition, paperback edition, and electronic edition. It's the same manuscript, going through the same production process. What differs is only the final form in which it's issued. Each book will have a P&L that will cover the book as a whole, with costs associated with different formats being line items in that format. eBooks will not have a separate P&L. Most of the costs involved in producing a book occur before the book ever reaches the stage of being published in any format, and do not magically go away because it's an eBook.

But really, most of these costs are solely involved with making a printed book, and all of these costs should only be factored in regarding the physical book. The e-book should be a whole separate entity. Especially as a lot are back catalog titles and thus any costs cost in producing the physical book no longer apply (and have been recouped in the physical print run).

You might make that argument for back catalog, but what about new books? Print volumes don't subsidize the production of electronic editions, and you can't simply say an assortment of costs have already been recouped by the physical press run. The accounting doesn't work that way, and better not work that way if you expect to stay in business as a publisher.

You seem to be assuming printed books will go away, and ebooks will be the only form. I suggest not holding your breath waiting. There are whole classes of books for which electronic publication is a poor fit, and ebooks are still an emerging format. They are an additional format for books, and not a replacement for print. You may expect this to be the case for the foreseeable future.
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Dennis