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.
[[SNIP]]
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Dennis
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Dennis:
We have an existence proof, in the form of Baen. As you well know, they sell their eBooks in
exactly that $2-6 price-range that you doubt is feasible*. And the ebooks make money -- even after being charged their per-copy share of all the costs and overhead associated with the book.
*The books are $6 on a single-copy basis, with prices dropping as low as $2 for books bought as part of a monthly bundle (at least in months that have larger-than-normal numbers of books).
Xenophon