Quote:
Originally Posted by taustin
And all this at a time when the market is demanding lower retail prices in the incorrect perception that ebooks cost a lot less to produce than paper books (when, in fact, it isn't that much less). .
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That's not actually the case (well, not always, anyway). Many of the initial costs (royalties, salaries, getting the actual text into a usable format) are the same or may even be slightly higher, but from then on, it becomes very much cheaper - no costs for printing, paper* or storage, and much smaller costs for distribution. Once the file is created, there is no limit on the number of copies that can be supplied, and this incurs very little additional cost, as most of it is automated. Further savings are likely to come from not having to pay wholesalers and from having no or much smaller bookstores. Obviously, this is for a publisher supplying ebooks only - in practice, most publishers will supply paper books as well, thus reducing this difference considerably, as printing costs are highest for the initial numbers of books. Thus, although there may be a case for having ebooks sold at close to the paper edition price if this is also being produced, there is, little justification, IMO, for doing so if it isn't.
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*Which can be
huge - I've worked in publishing for many years, and just by changing the type of paper used saved over £1M per year, and this was for a comparatively small publisher.