Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
This is nonsense. Virtually all the work that's involved in the production of a book (editing, layout, advertising, etc) is also there for an eBook. The only thing you don't have are the printing costs, which typically account for around 10-20% of total costs. An eBook that is priced 20% lower than the corresponding paperback is, therefore, reasonably priced.
This is complicated by the fact that, in many countries, paper books attract a lower rate of taxation than eBooks. In the UK, for example, paperbooks are "zero rated" for VAT, whereas eBooks attract the standard 20% VAT rate. The VAT therefore puts back the 20% that you might have saved in the production cost of the eBook.
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I'm sorry but this is wrong. About 50% of the list price of a paper book was allocated to the retailer to run their brick and mortar store (wages, benefits, lease, heat, hydro, computer). The relative cost of running an incremental electronic transaction is trivial. It's outrageous that the "agents" are being paid 30% guaranteed when the brick and mortar stores weren't making that. I don't disagree the production costs are largely the same but paper costs are not a fixed percentage.
Another way to looks at is that the author puts 1 FTE of effort into a book. I'll be generous and say that the combined effort from the publisher (editing, layout, artwork etc..) is 1 FTE. Now add a dollar value to the FTE and you have the cost. The problem is that the publishers have been telling the authors that their FTE is worth a fraction of the publisher's combined FTE. Electronic books are going to force this to be re-evaluated.
The real question is how many books do you have to sell to turn a profit. I think that the $1 price is way too low and the only reason there are so many books at that price point is that the authors have been told that is all they are worth. I suspect the price will work out to the $5 or $6 range where you'd have to sell about 50,000 books to be happy and hope for the lottery win by selling much more.