Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
I think price is really the question. I think that the publishers would certainly be willing to put out backlist at $6-10. I think a lot of posters here think that backlist prices should be $1-5.
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And they should be $2-5 dollars. What are the costs?
Story editing? Zero. Already done before, first time around.
Cover cost? Optional. Many backlists don't have a cover. Even if they do want a cover, don't they already have old covers for the book? It's paid for, re-use (just like the story...). The publisher bought it, didn't they? (I have a biography of James Bama, most of his covers were work for hire.)
Scanning and Proofing cost? These are real costs. They are ways to lower them (for another thread) but they are a real cost for e-books.
Putting the actual e-book together. I know a person working in the EU doing this as a private contractor. Price? 100 Euros a book. ($142 USD).
Advance to the author? Next joke. The author can deal or not. No advance for doing nothing.
Website/Space? These companies already have websites, how much more does it cost to keep a 1 megabyte file online?
Accounting? Simple inventory, not Open Item inventory. Every copy is the same. Same costs as any retail operation, spread over the entire backlist.
DRM? Why? At $2, say on Amazon, why bother to hunt for a pirate copy. One button buying, bro...That's paying for the convenience, if not the content. Besides if the DRM infrastructure cost as much as the book, you wasting you money as a publisher.
But the publishers don't want $6-10, they want $15-20. They are just forced down to $6-10.