Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
A publisher can produce an ebook in minutes. I mean, what does it take anyway? The publisher has the text of the book. So he only has to do a little formatting. DRM is done by software or by the bookshop that sells the book over the internet. Compared with an actual paper book there are virtually no costs involved. So why are there still so many books on the market that are not being sold as ebooks? I don't get it. Does anyone?
Alan
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I think you underestimate the work involved in putting out an ebook.
Assume the original manuscript is a Microsoft Word document. Then ask which ebook formats you want to issue the book in. PDF? LRF? AZW? Mobi? HTML? Something else?
Each is going to require modifications to the original manuscript to generate the ebook format, and I can almost guarantee that doing it right won't be the work of a few minutes.
Note that what the publisher sends to the printer isn't the Word document. Someone on the publisher's staff brings the Word document into Quark Express for typesetting and pagination. The printer will get a Quark file, or possibly a PDF to feed to their imagesetter that will generate the plates.
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Dennis