Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
The idea is that a significant part of the price for physical books today are for things that no longer exist with ebooks, but the music companies and book publishers are not wanting to change.
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But you do have more costs than most people think. The only cost you really don't have is the actual printing (which isn't as much as some people think, about 10-15% of the cover price). You still have all the traditional production costs, plus the distribution costs just like pbooks. What they need to do is get rid of the old style distribution model where wholesalers & retailers get 70% of the books cover price divided between them (yes, they even use this for ebooks), every hand things pass through means someone needs to get paid. This of course applies mainly to the big traditional publishing houses. There are lots of e-publishers who are trying different things to figure out the best way to do things.
Some publishers (Hatchette Book Groups Orbit line for example) are cutting a few bucks off of pbook list prices on their ebooks. For example Lilith Saintcrow's Dante Valentine series books are $6.99 list as MMPB's, but $4.99 list as ebooks. Jennifer Rardin's Jaz Parks books are $12.99 list as Trade PB's, but $8.99 list as ebooks. Some other publishers are starting to try lower list on ebooks too, it's a start if nothing else (it's the biggies like Penguin that are the most guilty on pricing issues).