Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Maltby
Hmm... I wonder if those "industry insiders" use those figures when dealing
with authors and their agents? Have you heard of Creative Accounting?
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I can go get quotes from printers myself. Even in small quantities, say a few thousand, a hardcover can be printed for a small fraction of the average cover price. Mass production with automated presses will reduce that by an order of magnitude. Shipping costs you can get from
www.ups.com, and again, bulk shippers get discounts.
The percentage for paperbacks is higher, sure, but it's still not that big a percentage. I doubt the printing costs on the average mass market paperback are more than $1.
(It is a near universal truth in the manufacture of physical goods that the suggested retail will be between 6 and 10 times the cost to manufacture. Paper books, being so automated, are probably closer than 10 than 6, but seem to be fairly typical.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Maltby
When the book buying public comes to not need a supply of pbooks that
exceeds the amount of ebooks they consume, and the production of a
pbook is not a part of the book production process anymore, we may find
less use of such figures. When the author can produce his/her own ebook
and acquire such a following that even the pbook publishing houses take
interest, all on their own, the $35 pbook may find it hard to compete with
the $10 ebook. I wonder if the "industry insiders" will be telling the authors
"Hey we can get $35 a copy for your book, if we make a pbook!, why settle
for what the ebook gives you?".
Luck;
Ken
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Any price reduction of more than about 10% for ebooks will -
will - result in lower quality. And unfortunately, there is a lot of pressure for bigger reductions, mostly from the public's lack of understanding of what publishers do. Writers do not create books, they create manuscripts. The publisher turns the manuscript in to a book. And puts, on average, about as many man-hours in to the process as the author does writing it.
If you're interested in the views of people who actually write for a living, take at a look at
Charlie Stross' blog. There's a recent entry by Charlie on why he doesn't self-publish (he's one of the hottest writers in the sf market right now, so it's reasonable to think he just might have a clue) and the most recent entry (as of right now) is from a guest blogger on why she does. Charlie's entry has links to previous posts that go in to some detail on how a manuscript becomes a book.