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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
It varies by book. I know one editor for a major trade house who claims the costs are 10%. I consider 20% the top end, and suspect 15% is more likely.
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Does that editor include returns in that cost? Those are, I suspect a major part of how the numbers seem skewed; claiming "print/distribution/etc costs are 10% of production"--and then trashing 1/3 of the production--is disingenuous. If there's a 33% return rate, then print etc. is 10% of 64% of the run, and 100% of 33% of the run, for a total of 42% of the production costs.
I know the 100% on those is skewed, because it includes editorial & author advance costs. But you get the idea... if 33% of a run isn't being sold for profit, the margins are drastically different.
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Pretend I'm the publisher issuing the book. I see the chance of selling the ebook at the same price as the paper edition, with the 15%-20% savings of not issuing a print edition flowing to my bottom line. If I believe I can successfully charge the same price as the paper edition and see comparable sales, tell me why I ought to lower it? (The fact that you will then buy it will not sway me. You're one reader. I'm concerned with tens or hundreds of thousands of readers.)
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Tens or thousands of readers might buy it if it cost what paperbacks cost. Especially if the competition is insisting on $14 for ebooks. If publishers are going to enter the direct marketplace, they'll need to realize that their competition is a lot more immediate than they've been dealing with.
Publishers who sell to distributors based on long-term contracts (who sell to stores, who sell to readers) are in a very different position from publishers who sell directly to readers with an intermediary who provides only the UI. They need to advertise to those individuals, not to other companies... and enticing individuals involves sorting out what each of them values.
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(I have encountered folks who think that being in electronic form adds value to the book, and will pay more for an ebook edition than a mass market paperback.)
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If ebooks had a used & giveaway market, I'd think this was true. With the current state of things and most publishers trying to push "one purchase = 1 reader," or at most "1 purchase = small handful of readers selected before purchasing, all of whom have access to all your reading material," I don't believe there's added value; it's a trade-off.
Baen's ebooks are more valuable to me than paperbacks; Smashwords' aren't.