Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
Firstly, who said that was a given?
Besides that, now add in cost of warehousing and distribution.
Now increase the cost-per-unit to take account of returns. (You pay to print all the copies, not just the ones you sell)
I don't think the figure is 10%.
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All of the available figures put the number between 10-20%. Because of the scope, mass production, warehousing, and even delivery are *cheap*.
Amazon has it's own warehousing and distribution expenses, but it can competitively ship books to 5,000 individual addresses in a city using UPS. It is much, much cheaper for a publisher to deliver 5,000 books to *one* address in a city than for a company to deliver the items individually to 5,000 separate addresses.
But I always find these "cost" arguments kind of curious anyway. The cost difference between manufacturing a hardback and a paperback is something like $2, but people never argued that the publishers had some sort of moral obligation to sell the hardback for only $2 more.
But for some reason, as soon as the topic turns to e-book, the conversation is "OMG, those greedy publishers are *keeping* the extra dollar they saved by making an e-book. They have a moral obligation to pass that dollar on to the customers! Otherwise, it's just a rip off!! Blah blah, etc."