Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
And 90% of the work is frontloaded for traditional books, too.
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Whether that's 90% or 10% of the cost for print books depends on the size and length of the print run. The longer a book is in print, the more of its costs will be physical expenses.
Print books and ebooks have the same costs--until it's time to print. At which point, the ebook costs $0 per copy, and the pbook costs ~15-30%* cover price per copy to print... plus a monthly cost to the publisher for keeping those resources available and ready.
(While big publishers are fond of glibly stating that books can cost "as little as" 10% of cover price to print, a few statements from publishers who've released *specific* numbers indicate it's often much higher. If Macmillan wants people to believe print, storage, and distribution costs are negligible, they can release some hard numbers: for 10,000 copies of the new Wheel of Time book, how much did it cost to print? To ship? We'll do the math ourselves, thanks.)