[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

So is this the reason behind georestrictions? An American publisher isn't allowed to sell a book in Europe, so the retailer, now an agent for the ebook is also restricted. Nice.

Whether the the retailer is a traditional retailer or and agent under the Agency Model is irrelevant. If the publisher doesn't have the right to sell the book in a particular location, the reseller doesn't either.

For instance, we order occasional books from Amazon UK - hardcover editions of British publications of Terry Pratchett, J. K. Rowling, and Tom Holt (who doesn't seem to have a US publisher these days.) We can place the order with Amazon UK and have them ship to us. We cannot order them from Amazon US. They don't have the rights to sell the British editions.

Hachette caused a fuss a couple of years back by pulling ebook titles they published from one of the ebook retailers (Books On Board, I think), because they didn't think the retailer had the technology in place to properly enforce georestriction on their titles. They were concerned about legal action by other publishers who held the rights to those titles in their areas.

If it sounds stupid, well, it arguably is. But the problem is not going away any time soon. If a publisher licenses worldwide ebook rights in the first place, it's one thing. If they don't, it's another. And the vast majority of back catalog has contracts negotiated back before the whole issue arose, and won't have worldwide ebooks rights as part of the package.

It's a symptom of much larger problem, which is that the Internet is making things like national boundaries increasingly irrelevant in many cases.

That is strange, because in the articles about costs, all of the things you mention are counted for the hardcover price, after which it is said that the ebook will have the same costs, so the publishers effectively count everything twice, plus they ignore the paperbacks.

Nope. I never said costs are double counted. There are costs common to all three editions, incurred in acquiring and preparing the book for publication in the first place, which will be allocated across all three editions.

The print editions do not absorb costs like that, with the ebook tagging along for free. The accounting doesn't work that way.

And what happens if the ebook is the only edition? Those costs don't magically go away just because it's an ebook. The ebook will then bear the entire burden, instead of an allocated share of it.

So please quote an article that talked about "acquisition with attendant advance, contract, line edit, copy edit, proofread, cover design and art, markup and typeset and the like" costs being distributed on all the forms of the book. I dare you.

If I find one, I will. How do you think they get applied?

Meanwhile, you seem to be saying you simply don't believe me, because my posts don't agree with what you want to be true.

Like I said earlier, it doesn't matter if you believe me or not. As mentioned, I've been an observer of publishing for decades, and most of the folks I know and hang out with are in publishing. I've learned a bit about the subject, and try to share what I know here. Everything I say is true to the best of my knowledge.

I sympathize with folks who want their ebooks cheaper. I'd like to get things cheaper too. But for reasons I've been trying to explain in this thread and elsewhere, I don't think it's possible for publishers to produce and sell ebooks as cheaply as many folks would like. Authors want to get paid actual money for the rights to issue a book. People in publishing that acquire, line edit, copy edit, proofread, and prepare books for publication as print volumes or ebooks expect to get paid for what they do. And publishers pay rent on office space, have electric, phone, and other bills, and an assortment of other costs that are part of corporate overhead, plus a need to make a certain level of profit to remain a going concern and open for business the next day.

Book prices, paper and ebook, will reflect those factors.

If I'm correct in my notions, you simply won't get ebooks from major trade publishers at the price point you might like, because they can't produce ebooks at that price point and stay in business.

I think I am correct. Time will tell.

Have you actually been in meetings to approve something?

Yes. Too many times.

Think about it: the hours it takes to make a proposal, getting it to meet the expectations of the person directly above only to have a person one step higher have the completely opposite idea. Those hours for all the people involved, plus the overhead costs, plus all the stuff that clutters the network because everything will get mailed, and every person will have a copy of the same document on their computer, and in their email, with everything backed-up for safety; those, if I'm not mistaken, imply costs.

You're quite right. They do imply costs. The question is how great the costs are, and whether removing them will materially affect the price charged to you.

My feeling is that they are a relatively small component of the total cost, and dropping them won't reduce the publisher's costs enough to allow a reduction in the book's price.

(And trying to figure out what those costs actually are and allocate them to a particular book will be an exercise comparable to rabbis splitting hairs over points in Talmud. I've been in occasional meetings where allocation of costs is discussed, and everyone has the same opinion: "It shouldn't hit my budget!" )
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Dennis