Quote:
Originally Posted by bgalbrecht
This is one of the BPH's biggest problems. They know that the cost to print and ship a hardcover book is something like $2, and for a paperback 50 cents, and the price differential is really so they can recoup all the upfront costs early. The BPH's beef with Amazon was that Amazon was setting an ebook price point for NYT best sellers of $10, instead of 40%-45% off the hardcover list price, a discount common at many brick & mortar retailers. Ultimately, this limits the BPH's ability to raise hardcover prices if they can't force the ebook price to follow suit when they are released simultaneously.
BTW, if you haven't seen it, there's an amusing sequence about Amazon & Bezos this last week in the comic Non Sequitur . All hail Lord Bezos! |
Yep. While I'm not so sure that your cost figures are correct (there are a lot of ways to look at assigning cost in the publishers' business model), ultimately the publishers' biggest issue is getting consumers to buy into the value of getting a ebook now, at the same time a hardback is released, rather than at the paperback price a year later. Personally, I have no problem paying extra to get a book that I want now, but I seem to be in a rather distinct minority. Most seem to want the ebook now, for paperback prices.
IMPO, ebooks are going to totally change the publishing business. Rather obviously, this is way off topic, but I predict that we will see a lot of small publishers/editors pop up who basically provide authors with editing and marketing services while providing consumers with a more or less known quality in a specific genre, i.e. the consumer doesn't have to wade through reams and reams of dreak to find the few good books that come out every month. That's what Baen provided for years. I think that rather than having ebooks always in print and available will offset the extra money that hardbacks brought in.