Quote:
Originally Posted by Robotech_Master
Or so the conventional wisdom goes, anyway.
It kind of depends on how much of the total price of the print book comes from the overhead of printing, shipping, and storage (remember, e-books still have to be edited just like any other book, and the employees and fixed overhead costs of the publisher still have to be paid—not to mention the author himself)—and how much of that savings is eaten up by the costs of getting the book formatted electronically and sold, and paying for on-line storage and bandwidth.
The idea that publishers automagically Save Great Gobs Of Money by selling e-books over selling p-books has always seemed a little suspiciously simplistic to me, because most of the people saying it do not tend to have publishing industry experience, and publishers tend to be reluctant to provide exact cost figures for their books. (And honestly, why should they?)
Baen is making money selling e-books at slightly below paperback cost (or at least they say they are), but they don't really think of themselves as an "e-book vendor." They see the e-books as mainly promotional materials, and seem to think that even the people who buy the e-books will just turn around and buy the printed books after reading the first couple of chapters—so they might not be trying quite as hard to make a profit as those who view e-books as desirable in and of themselves.
!SNIP!
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Actually, they are well aware that there's a core group of us who would rather have the eBooks. According to various comments made by Baen insiders (I am emphatically
NOT a Baen insider!) the single largest savings is cutting out both the distributor's and the retailer's cut of the price. They do save somewhat by not having to print the book, but not nearly as much as some poster here seem to think. They also say that eBooks cover their pro rata share of the various fixed costs. And that eBooks bring in more money than all foreign sales combined (which includes Canadian sales). They're nowhere near enough to run the company, but they do make a significant contribution to the bottom line.
The other major effect they cite is that eBooks are not subject to inventory taxes (or warehousing costs), so they need never go out of print. Which I think is a dandy side benefit.
Xenophon