Quote:
Originally Posted by murg
Unlike movies, the costs/effort associated with both the production and the distribution are a lot less with ebooks.
The effort of production is about the same (BPH/self) other than editing, which can be had relatively cheaply. The cost/effort of self publishing is minimal at best, even accounting for marketing.
So, if the BPHs have picked up the Hollywood style, they are in a different marketplace, and may discover that it doesn't work for them.
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I disagree on cheap editing. Editing and covers are actually fairly expensive and have gone up substantially in the last 7 years. Even if you do your own cover, you are probably going to pay 70 to 100 dollars for various pieces of stock art--and that is at the low end.
While copy editing can be had for around 200 to 300 dollars, that isn't all that cheap for some budgets and it doesn't include storyline editing which is often more like 300 to 600. Marketing is becoming extremely expensive for self-published authors--check the prices at bookbub one of the most popular places to take an ad out these days. Some one-day ads are over 1000 dollars. I think the cheapest is 300 or so for a one-day ad. Book sites that used to take a percentage of the haul (Based on amazon numbers sold) now price such that they take nearly 80 to 100 percent of what they guess the profit to be. The author gets "visibility" and hopes for "sell-through" on a series.
Marketing USED to be cheaper because many sites relied on at least some income as an Amazon (or other) associate. But the cost of ads has skyrocketed, especially on a site that has the ability to drive sales. You can buy 5 and 10 dollar ads, but your results are usually zero. (Many ad sites spend too much time trying to reach AUTHORS rather than readers.)
Some of the low-cost advantages of being indie have receded as the cottage industry serving us writers has expanded and grown.
That said, we don't have employee costs such as paying out for healthcare or 401k or pensions or whatever benefits a large company might offer.
(These are not complaints. Just pointing out some of the costs of indie publishing.)