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Old 12-04-2010, 03:20 PM   #179
murraypaul
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney View Post
That's what reserve against returns is all about. But that shouldn't be a factor in ebooks.

Who is excluding them? Are you suggesting that reserve against returns be applied to ebooks as well as print editions?

The costs I mentioned above are all of those involved in acquiring a manuscript and preparing it for production, incurred before publication takes place. They apply to paper and ebook editions.

I exclude reserve against returns at that point. If I'm only publishing an electronic edition, they are meaningless. If I'm publishing paper and electronic, they should only be applicable to paper.
And they should be included in the proportion of costs that are attributable to producing a physical book.

You are defining cost in such a way that excludes:
- Warehousing and distribution
- Retail cost and markup
- Cost of returns
And then saying that the costs attributable to the physical nature of books are only a small proportion. Of course they are, because you have excluded most of the components that go into those costs.


Quote:
We don't have wholesale prices and distributors?

If I publish an ebook, and sell directly to you, there's no wholesale price. Wholesale is what gets charged to a reseller. If I sell through someone else who takes a cut for providing the service, I'd call my price to them the wholesale price. Their price to you is the retail price. I'd call that true regardless of whether the reseller is a retailer in the usual sense, or an agent under the Agency Model. What would you call the price Amazon pays the publishers under the Agency Model, since it's not the price they charge you?
If a producer sells their goods to a retailer, who then sells them to a customer, then you have two sales, one at a wholesale price, and one at a retail price. But as we keep being told, Amazon et al are just acting as agents for the producers, they never actually own the goods themselves, do they. So only a single sale has taken place.
The producers are directly setting the retail price for Agency eBooks and paying the retailers a commission for their services. Amazon does not pay a price to the publisher, they remit the money they have collected on their behalf.
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