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Good to have your company, Ray. Very best wishes from Neil at BeWrite Books.
Although I agree that ebook editions should never cost more than treebook editions, when it comes to ebook publication of existing catalogue titles it's a different thing.
Although we never price above half of paperback price for ebooks ($5.95 across the board), we save almost 40% on high per-item PoD print costs and can just about justify lower ebook prices and loss of print sales on that basis (even with some ebook-only releases recently). Bigger houses, though, who save only about 12% on print because mass-runs are so much cheaper -- and even taking into account warehousing, physical distribution and a return rate averaging around 50% -- do face a problem because most costs are constant and every treebook sale is likely to take away a treebook purchase.
We're all in a bit of a tizz over ebook cover-pricing right now, and the Agency 5 Model won't help publishers, retailers or readers any more than DRM does. I hope things will settle down much more quickly than they did when mass-run paperbacks were introduced in the last century and offer a fair deal all round to author, publisher, retailer and reader.
(And if you want a real rant, compare the current ebook retail store sales commissions with the penal discounts that have been demanded by brick and mortar stores in the past -- some make the high street bookshop owner/manager look like a philanthropist. How can that be justified in a no-risk, no inventor, shoe-string cost operation offering nothing but a place among throusands in a crowded and virtual shop window display?)
Cheers. Neil
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