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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Nope. The equivalent statement there would be two printed paperback editions with different covers, assuming the more popular cover would cannibalize the sales.
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I guess that saying that the manufacturer makes 5" and 6" ereaders would have worked better? Anyway, most buyers won't buy both. And there is also the argument that the PB cannibalizes HC sales. There are people who want the book and won't buy the HC, but instead wait for the PB.
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
And an "impulse buy" range is?
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How much do you spend on presents for friends?
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
No, it's not the publisher's doing.
[...]
This sort of consolidation has been happening across retailing for decades, and is not unique to bookselling.
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So in the beginning publishers were selling directly to the readers. Then they got more and more greedy, until they made it impossible to buy directly from them. They could change that with ebooks, but won't, because it would be just too difficult for their atrophied accounting department to handle a small bookstore downloading directly from them.
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
No, that you wouldn't see publishers commenting on it. Like I said, why should they?
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Confession is good for the soul.
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
That they make more profit than they do with new authors? Oh, certainly, they likely do, for any individual title. They don't have acquisition costs or most of the editing costs. At issue is just how big a part of their business selling print editions of PD works is. Offhand, I'd call that a small slice in the overall scheme of things. It's worth doing because there's a market.
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No, the big slice comes from the best sellers. But they don't mention the costs related to titles that become bestsellers, and they definitely don't mention the profit.
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
But if that market disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn't sink the publishers who had been addressing it. It's a sideline for them, not a core business.
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When schools will stop having a required reading list, we will have bigger problems than the financial state of publishers.
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
My question still stands, and see my revised numbers for why. My error on posting in haste and getting it wrong the first time - I was in a hurry, relied on memory, and didn't unearth the email giving the figures I quoted in my revision. I should know better than to rely on memory.
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The revised numbers came later. Your first reaction was to pretend that you didn't say anything. You might have noticed that this is what I was talking about since I said "Just so I'm clear about your way of thinking" in my last post. But then again you might be pretending that I didn't write that.
The only question was you saying "Who told you hardcovers don't cost all that much more to make?", and the answer remains: you.
What I said initially was:
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Originally Posted by Sil_liS
So now we get to ebooks, and we can fit an entire library on a microSD card, and we know that at least the cost of printing and shipment has to go away, and there are lower risks for the publisher. But now we are told that it was all just a misunderstanding. Hardcovers don't cost that much more to make. It's just the privilege of getting the book faster.
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How does the change from:
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Manufacturing costs are generally about 50 cents - $1.00 for PBs, and perhaps $2 for HCs.
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to:
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Unit costs of manufacture: (Accurate as of 2008)
Mass Market: $.50 - $1.
Trade Paper: $1-2
Hardcover: $2-$4.
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influence my point? I can see that it means that since the costs for HC can be slightly higher than previously estimated, ebooks should cost slightly less, but the point was that we aren't paying for that anyway.