Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
The question is whether the $2-$6 range you cite is feasible. Offhand, I suspect not.
Consider what happens when a book is bought for publication. An editor reads the manuscript, and decides it's a book her house can sell. She negotiates with the author or author's agent over the contract, and offers an advance against royalties for the book rights. How big the advance will be will be determined by how many copies of the book the publisher thinks it can sell. A book perceived as a potential best seller will get a much better deal than a first novel from a new writer.
Once a deal is struck and a manuscript is accepted, the manuscript must be line edited by the editor, who will issue a note requesting revisions designed to improve the book. An Art Director must design a cover and commision art for it, and a book designer must create the typography and interior layout specifications. The revised manuscript must be copy edited and proofread, and then marked up and typeset and put into a form that can be handed to a printer to make plates and print the book.
We have the advance paid for the book, the fee paid for the cover art, plus the time of the editor who acquired and edited it,the lawyer who worked on the contract, the Art Director and Book Designer, the copy editor, the proofreader, and the DTP person who created the files for the printer, and we have an allocated share of the overhead of the publisher, covering things like office space rental, utilities and phone service.
And all of this is before the book is actually printed, bound, warehoused, or distributed.
Yes, we can expect ebooks to be cheaper than pbooks, because they don't have manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution costs, but we are unlikely to see them that much cheaper. The sort of cheap prices I see wished for seem to presume that either the up front costs of acquiring and preparing a book are a lot lower than they likely are, or that a cheaper ebook can sell a large enough volume of copies to make up for the lower price. That presumes that price is the main reason people don't buy more books. It's a factor, but I doubt it's the only factor, or the most important factor.
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Dennis
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If I may counterpoint, how much more does a repeat printing cost in the P-book world? Everything you listed is already done for a second printing of a p-book. You just manufacture, warehouse, and ship, correct? Most of the overhead of editing, cover design, copy editing, proofreading, mark-up, typesetting, ect. has already been done for the p-book first edition. Yes?
So why are all these expenses being rebudgeted to an e-book? Especially if they are planned to be released, say, a year after the p-book edition. One would assume that it would be able to piggyback off of the existing effort, like a paperback does off a hardback. If I'm wrong, please explain to me what I'm missing...