Quote:
Originally Posted by TFeldt
Aye, but I was never debating the per-title costs. I have absolutely no idea what those might be so I'd be speaking in utter ignorance if I did. What I responded to was the following statement;
These days servers (power, maintenance, etc) and bandwidth is next to free. Thus the per-copy cost of an ebook is virtually nil compared to the very real costs of a physical copy (material, printing, shipping, storage, etc).
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These days servers (power, maintenance, etc) and bandwidth is next to free. Thus the per-copy cost of an ebook is virtually nil compared to the very real costs of a physical copy (material, printing, shipping, storage, etc).[/QUOTE]
Amazon is known to have spent $56 million on servers with Rackable Systems in 2007, and $86 million in 2008, when they bought more servers than
Microsoft.
You have a funny definition of "virtually nil"
Plus, what
I was responding to was Rob Lister's claim that the cost
is nil, not virtually nil. The typical data center uses megawatts of electricity, servers have limited lifespans, and system engineers do not work for free. You can play accounting games with how you track the expenditures, but there most certainly is a per copy cost to selling ebooks.
And, once again, the cost of putting ink on paper and getting the book in to your local store accounts for only about 10% of the retail price. Really.