Quote:
Originally Posted by LuvReadin
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.
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And yet, industry insiders have gone on the record about it, and say that about 10% of the retail price is for putting ink on paper and getting it to the store. So any time you vote for more than a 10% reduction in the price of an ebook, you're voting for lower quality. So say people who I have heard of before and know to be working in the industry.