Quote:
Originally Posted by TheLongshot
Problem with this is that, as far as I know, the production cost between an e-book and a dead tree books is pretty similar. That may be because the publishing world isn't optimised for producing e-books, but that's the way things are.
|
According to industry indisders (including the very Charlie Stross in the subject line), the publisher invests about as many man-hours in a book as the author does - hundreds or thousands. And the price of putting ink on paper and getting the finished product to the store shelf is about 10% of the total cover price. Add in a production process that isn't, as you note, optomized for ebook production, and the book version may actually cost
more to produce and sell than the paper version (though it shoudn't - it should literally be one or two extra mouse clicks).
So the above example of a $5 paper book that sells for $4 as an ebook isn't actually realistic, unless you are willing to accept lower quality. As in, less editing, very little proofreading, and amateurish layout. All of which have suffered greatly in recent decades anyway. $4.50 would be more realistic, perhaps, but for the average book, the difference will be minimal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheLongshot
Personally, I don't have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is when e-books are priced higher than dead trees, or when they are priced at the same price as hardbacks.
|
And there, I agree with you. That's just insane (yeah, Penguin, I'm looking at
you).
Unfortunately, there is an unrealistic, unworkable expectation that eventually, when things settle out, ebooks will be priced at less than paperback books are now. And it just
won't work, unless we accept significantly lower quality. Ebooks will be, eventually, the death of hard backs (except for bestsellers, perhaps). Hard backs sell for quit a bit more, and profits are based on a percentage of the retail price, not a fixed amount. So hard backs are significantly more profitable
per book than paperbacks. When publishers eventually realize they won't be able to sustain a business model where the first releast of a book (hard backs) sells for several times as much as the eventual paperbacks, they will have no choice but to raise the mass market price (which will be for the ebook). People will tolerate hard backs being a lot more than paperbacks because they are a different physical products, with obvious advantages. But any difference between the ebook you buy on the day of its release and a year later will be improvements on the later release as typos are fixed and such.
Eventually, it will setting in at a price probably somewhat higher than current paperback prices are, but that will be from the day of release. Alternately, publishers will simply do even less editing, proofreading, etc., and the quality of books will continue to decline even more than it already has.
Personally, I'd rather pay hard cover prices for ebooks than stop reading because books suck so much.