Quote:
Originally Posted by Hellmark
While I agree with most of Elfwreck's comments, I disagree with him on pricing. From what reports I've seen, it is about 30-70 cents to print a book, and shipping costs to the stores are often mere pennies due to the volume they're sending at any given time. Say it costs $5k to ship a truck load, but you're sending 20k books on that truck. End result, you have up to a dollar extra in costs that you don't have with ebooks. Factor in DRM cost (which usually is carried by the retailer, even though it is the publisher that requires it), and the difference in expense is even smaller.
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You make a good point as long as you consider traditional publishers. Those publishers must cover the cost of production. That is more than the cost of printing a particular book. The cost of production involves legacy costs as well - the printing presses and the people who run them, the buildings housing the presses(land, taxes, mortgages), shipping, handling, and overstock returns. The traditional publisher has to cover those costs whether or not he publishes an e-version of the book. Even though many argue that these are different markets, I know that I buy e-books, paperbacks, and hardbacks. I assume others do so as well.
I just get a bit stubborn when I see an e-book selling for the same or more than a paperback. I expect that others react the same way. As e-readers grow in popularity, I suspect some publishers will come to the same realization or some new publisher will take advantage of the new technology. I think we have seen the beginning of this change in genre fiction.
We are seeing this happening in magazine publishing as well. I've subscribed to the Atlantic for more than 30 years and they now offer subscription for the iPad (if you subscribe to the print version you can get it for free).