Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimwit
There are now regularily priced pb's in the $13-15 range, which is obscene, but those things are massive usually. Very high page counts and popular authors. What would, say, a Harry Potter pb cost to make?
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I was looking at some rather massive PB books the other day. They were published in the 1960s and 1970s. So I adjusted those prices for 2011 dollars, and they were about half the price of current books.
The funny thing is, it should cost less to prepare a book for publication today. Computers have turned the publishing industry upside down since then because it became possible to go directly from an edited manuscript to print. Ebooks, of course, take that to the next level. Even though it doesn't really impact upon publication costs since authors get royalties, this revolution has also vastly streamlined the writing process. In theory, it is possible for authors to write more in the same amount of time in order to earn a desirable income.
If the computer industry was run like the publishing industry, we would be buying 8-bit computers with 48 kB of RAM at a pricetag of $17000. Oh, and the cassette drive and monitor are extra.