[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

But the problem starts with the fact that they sell the books half-price, or rather that they double the "value" to be able to give a discount to the big retailers. They don't mention the profit they make from selling to small retailers. It should be considerably more / book.

Dream on. Small book retailers are increasingly a thing of the past in the US. They can't match the buying power and pricing of the big chains, and can't match the big chains on price. They ones still around are specialty stores targeting niche markets.

And there are more layers in the chain. A big outfit like Barnes and Noble or Amazon will buy in bulk directly from the publisher, at a substantial volume discount. A smaller bookstore will have to go through a distributor like Ingrams or Baker and Taylor, who take their cut first. So the price at which the smaller bookstore gets the book determines the amount of discount the bookstore can give and make money on the title.

But they make a bigger profit than they would for new authors. And I don't see any publisher commenting on that, as they aren't commenting on the fact that with ereaders, people aren't going to need them for PD books.

You won't, and why should they? The market for print editions of PD books, in hardcover or paperback, is a niche market. Some houses address it, and some don't. But the money made from it is unlikely to be any significant fraction of their total revenue. It's small potatoes in the larger scheme of things.

But it has an effect on buyer psychology, making bigger = more expensive. And now we have the really tiny ebooks, and publishers are just shocked that most buyers aren't going for the ebook = hardcover value idea.

The value was never in the size. Hardcovers are durable reading copies, and the largest single customer for them will be libraries. But for the bestseller, the value is early access. The buyers want to read the book now, and are willing to pay for the privilege.

You're joking, right?

Unit costs of manufacture: (Accurate as of 2008)
Mass Market: $.50 - $1.
Trade Paper: $1-2
Hardcover: $2-$4.

Did you miss the fact that I quoted you? You say that it costs $1 more to manufacture a HC, and since the other costs are the same, it would mean that HC would cost $1 more to make than the PB. To me $1 difference means that it doesn't cost that much more to make.

No, I was wrong in the last post. Subsequently I checked back. Better numbers are the ones I mention above, from someone in book production, in the context of a discussion of pricing.

And even if it did cost $1 to make a book a hardcover instead of a PB, the price would not increase by just that dollar. It couldn't.

Well, if the publishers want people to stop associating the physical appearance of the book with the price, they should really stop doing that.

They won't. People who want a paper copy want a paper copy, and are paying for one. There is labor involved on the publisher's part to produce the book: editing my not be required, but proofreading, typesetting and markup are, to produce a book people will find readable. They make more money per copy on PD books, but the number of copies will be dwarfed by the other company sales.

The ultimate value is "how much do you want to read that book?" If you want to read it badly enough, you are willing to pay a higher price. That's what keeps hardcover sales worthwhile, as the majority of folks are paying for early access. Expect the same "early access" pricing applied to ebooks, for the same reason.
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Dennis