Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
I don't discount anything and I never said how much cheaper they are. Even if it's only $0.75 cheaper than a paperback or $2 cheaper than a hardcover; they're still cheaper to produce.
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Actually, cheaper to produce hasn't been indisputably established. It is true that ebooks don't have certain costs such as warehousing and returns. But other costs are (or can be higher). For example, it may cost more to hire someone who can convert the book and check that the conversion is correct (especially for nonfiction, less so for fiction).
The other fallacy in the argument is that it segregates books as if each book were a business in itself. IOW, those who only read fiction from the top 10 list only count those books in the cost equation, ignoring the many other books that the publisher also has to fund. Here on MR, many commenters insist on ignoring anything but what they care to read (witness the discussion about subsidizing books on China when all the commenter wants to read is Victorian romance).
The other fallacy is to segregate ebooks from pbooks. From a business perspective, they are not severable unless the only thing the publishing company does is publish ebooks (think self-publishing Smashwords authors).
When publishers set prices they do not simply look at the cost for producing the particular book; they look to the overall business costs of running the publishing company.
One other thing. The comparison is often made between pricing that publishers set and the pricing indie authors set. The discussion often devolves into how publishers should not use the books that the commenter wants to read and buy to support those the commenter does not want to read and buy. Yet no mention is ever made of the fact that the vast majority of authors have "day" jobs that provide a form of subsidy that allows them to price their ebook at $2.99 and be "profitable".
I know this is ground that has been tilled innumerable times, but it is worth remembering that declarations of fact are not necessarily factually based rather than opinion based.