[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Streamlining--I would suggest the marketing approval steps be left out (There's the big meetings where they bicker about which books get published and marketing does an analysis). Is that important? Yes, it is--but let's say they're taking a few books through only an ebook release first. Cut some of the overhead meetings. Par down the number of people who have say in art, and so on. Cut back on marketing through channels that add additional cost.

The question is what those meetings and approval steps actually cost. The people involved will be at them in any case, and are on salary.

Basically go at some of these books like a self-publisher. Buy cheaper art (I did). Definitely edit and copyedit.

Which, alas, are steps increasingly left out to save money...

Cut it loose to all the major retailers. See which books get some traction and go from there to any next steps. And in fact, this is what some publishers are doing--only they are letting people self-publish, following the numbers and picking up writers when they see success--and then they price the book higher, take a larger cut from the author (because they have to with their overhead--there's only so many people who are going to make a living from a book) and so on. (There's about 5 authors who have recently seen interest from agents and/or publishers over on kindleboards.com--this doesn't mention those already signed like R.J. Keller, Karen McQuestion, Sam...what is his last name--he wrote Metagame, I think the title is. )

The folks most likely to succeed at something like this are those who have already built a market via traditional publishing.

Interest from agents/publishers on places like Kindleboards is a mixed blessing. It depends upon just which agents and publishers.

I know that some of the largest overhead in a company is salary, retirement and healthcare. People talk about the book cost, but it really is the people cost behind it. You would have to leave out some of the people cost and the one that can be put off until later is probably marketing. Cover art is already being cut drastically down to photoshopping images, so they actually have made cuts there in their cost. I don't *like* that cut, but it is a reality.

Not just people cost, though I agree that's probably the biggest single component. There are other costs like rent on office space, electricity and phone service and the like that are part of the overhead of any business and get allocated as posrt of the cost of a product.

It's actually easier and cheaper for me to do it on my own, but I think it should also be easier for small publishers to lower their costs. I just read a post from a small publisher (her company was bought so she is no longer small). Her thoughts on pricing? People won't buy it if we price it too low-we want to look like the big guys so no one thinks we're less.

The smaller (we) are, the more nimble we have to be. And I don't happen to agree with "price too low and no one will buy because it's a reflection on quality." It's possible she is right--but my best selling books are the series that starts at $1.99.

I think she is right, for her audience. Your audience differs.

My point is, that if publishers *know* there is a market for books under 5 dollars, they have got to find a way to hit that target--if it's only via ebooks, then they still need to hit that target--or someone else will.

Do they? For any producer, there will be a minimum size for the market and price point to hit, to make the market worth addressing at all. The bigger you are, the larger your market has to be, and chances are the price you have to charge goes up, too.

For a major trade publisher, the question is two fold: first, can they address the market for ebooks at $5.00 and under, and actually make any money at it? If the answer to that is "yes", the next question is "Should they?" The answer to that question may be "No, they shouldn't, as they won't make enough money to justify the effort."

Management at publicly held companies are custodians of Other People's Money. They have a fiduciary responsibility to preserve and if possible grow their shareholder's value. So when they decide what to invest corporate funds in, the question is what the return will be. There are any number of cases of companies getting out of lines of business, because they were profitable, but not profitable enough, and management decided they could get better returns elsewhere.

As a relevant case, there were worries when Sony introduced the Sony Reader about their long-term commitment. Sony is a big consumer electronics manufacturer. They have to sell a lot of devices to make it worth doing. They had previously made and sold the popular Clie line of Palm OS PDAs. They got out of the market, because, while profitable, it wasn't profitable enough. The question was whether the market for a dedicated reader was big enough and would carry a high enough margin to justify Sony's investment, or whether they would pull the plug on the effort. Fortunately, the market does seem to be big enough, as Sony is still in it and introducing new models, but it was a source of concern.

A major trade house might decide to leave that market to folks structured to address it, and concentrate on stuff they can sell at a higher price with greater margins. They already do that in any case, declining to publish titles because they don't see a large enough market, and leaving such business to smaller specialty publishers structured to do it.

I happen to think there is a market there, which is why I cater to it. But I could be wrong. Maybe pricing the book higher and having that marketing and a publicist is really the right answer.

I think there is indeed a market there. And I think small publishers/self-publishers like yourself can address it. I don't think the big boys can.
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Dennis