[neilmarr]

I'm with Harry on the excellent point that the ebook is a superior product. But we may differ on the question of pricing.

Smaller but-all service, editorially-driven publishing houses like my own (and those marketing mainly on line) once regarded the ebook as a mere spin-off, a by-product of the print process and used ebooks as promotional tools with rock bottom prices and generally giving away freely many, many more than were actually sold.

I'm not ashamed to admit that Harry and others at MobileRead changed my mind over two years ago by alerting me to the fact that a for-print PDF was NOT an ebook. (Remember your thread under that heading, Harry?) The result was that my tech and design partner (MR member Tony Szmuk) spent two years laboriously converting all our titles into 'perfect' PDF, ePub and Mobi (entire backlist and all). It was one heck of hard work, but an exciting learning curve, too.

We invested heavily in new hardware and software -- not to mention legal fees and other costs involved in gaining additional and 'official' registration as an LLC publishing house in the USA so that for the first time last September we could deal direct with the huge new ebook stores rather than through a US-based aggregator.

Now more than 95% of our sales are in ebook form and priced at under 50% of the paperback cover price. Paperback sales have not been significantly affected by this sudden swing.

But -- and this is a huge BUT -- our selectivity, professional input and standards remain in place, though ALL this is now put into low-cost ebooks (with their much higher author royalties, etc) and print has become the by-product and necessary evil. Bear in mind, too, that some ebook retailers now demand a penal sales commission/discount, often much greater than even that of brick-and-mortar retailers of old.

We think our $5.95 across-the-board cover price for BB digital editions is reasonable. At the moment. Even though the house's two principals, working at least 15x7, have waived our own royalties (our only personal income) for two years to help finance the switch, we simply cannot afford to lower the price. I stress at the moment.

There are those who think this a bargain and some who feel that $5.95 RRP too high. I appreciate both points of view. And we rely strongly on the community here at MobileRead to influence our decisions.

I'm afraid, though, that we -- like many other indie publishers, authors and readers -- are at the suck-it-and see stage of experimentation on pricing.

It's a maze, and everywhere you step the land is mined. Some companies, our own included, might eventually drop the eternally loss-making print side as a money-saving move to help reduce ebook cover prices even further. (Unlike the 12.5%-15% of cover price of a mass-run paperback, non-inventory print publishing costs us more like 50% of cover price.)

Big houses using mass-run production and still relying heavily on traditional brick-and-mortar marketing rather than non-inventory print and online sales, face a very different but similarly awkward situation.

I can only hope that the reader comes out ahead and that worthy houses and authors survive the turmoil. Meantime, we keep twice-daily tabs on the views so generously shared in these forums. It's a most effective form of market research ... and good fun, to boot.

Thanks and best wishes. Neil