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There's way too much "Hollywood Pricing" in the mass book industry. What do I mean by that? Here's an example from the book The Whole Equation. Creative head of a studio developes serious health problems in the early 1930's. His doctor tells him to take 6 months off or get fitted for a pine box.
So he does. But he loves his job, so as he's loafing on the French Riveria, he can't help but think about various picture projects in various states. He thinks about 50 pictures in six month, and calculates he's spent $50,000 worth of time thinking about them. How does he bill the time among the pictures? Simple. He bills $50,000 to each picture! That's "Hollywood Pricing"!
And so with p-books/e-books. Here are the general costs for a book.
Manuscript acquisition - (One price - all forms nowadays)
Editing cost to polish manuscript - (One price - all forms)
Typesetting/galley costs - (P-book only, once per edition)
Polished manuscript to e-book format (e-book only, once per format)
Printing and distribution costs (p-book only)
Server costs (e-book only)
DRM costs (e-book only, optional)
Marketing (p-book and e-book, verious amounts per type)
Let's assume a 4 tiered progress. HC first, pays for manuscript acquistion and editing. Second, Trade PB - pays on any residium from HC. Third - MMPB, editing paid for, but manuscript still costs. Each P-book has own typesetting/printing/returns cost. Finally, e-book, manuscript costs plus e-book only costs. All 4 have various marketing costs.
So why is everybody screaming about editing costs of e-books? It's already been paid for upstream! E-book is not the lead format, no more so than the broadcast showing of a blockbuster movie its premier! The only editing cost of an e-book should be for scanning the p-book, and proofing it to precisely the same as the p-book. That's all folks. If the author feels he needs to rewrite some passage(s), give the scanned/proofed copy and tell him to return it in the same format.
Now this is for fiction books. Reference books are a whole 'nother kettle of fish (i.e. much more expensive to scan and proof.) I, personally, have scanned and proofed several books for PG Austrailia, and completed the task in under 40 hours for a 300 page book. And that's for free! (And frankly, I did a better job that half the commercial e-books I've bought.) But if I were getting paid $50 an hour, that's still less than $2000 per book. For a scan that will last forever. Shucks, you could probably get a fan to do it for free. (But the "Hollywood Pricing" is busy spending a $2.5 million advance for a first book from a comedian (that hasn't even been written it yet), because it's gonna be a "Blockbuster", and whine about e-book piracy! <Shrug>)
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