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Originally Posted by LadyKate
Don't get me wrong. I don't advocate the reselling of ebooks. I just would like to see more of the mainstream publishers reflecting the lower production cost of ebooks in the price. For instance, Nalini Singh's latest novel has the ebook (available now) priced at a bit over 8 dollars more than the paperback (available in December). I could understand in a way if the price of the ebook was to drop to below the paperback price in December (a reflection of "I gotta get it NOW NOW NOW" cashing in by the publisher. I have to wonder how much of the production cost savings are actually passed on to the authors? Do they get more royalties for ebooks than paperbacks?).
I still find that ebook prices do not reflect the production, storage, transportation cost savings.
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There is no reason for the ebook to cost more other than the "gotta get it now" crowd so you are right, it could come down in price if the publisher were reasonable. There is a school of thought the the "instant" gratification market never goes away---see book, want to one-click to get it now, so publishers can charge a premium for the convenience. But I agree, that isn't why the publishers do it. They are still trying to control pricing and push sales of paperbacks. After all, they printed the things and they want to make sure they get rid of them all. There's also a separately counted best sellers list where the sales of print matter.
Ebook royalties are now very complicated and vary greatly from publisher to publisher. I haven't checked in with the authors I know lately, but in general the authors were making more from an ebook (not because of pricing, but because the publishers never expected to sell many so they "generously" were giving a larger cut) . That larger cut has been whittled down quite a bit in the last few years for new contracts. I don't know where it stands right now, but the fight is ongoing.
Re: How much it costs to put a book out. That cost is usually underestimated because the bulk of it tends to be the wages of the editor (acquiring and main editor) the proofreader and the copy-editor, along with overhead costs of running a publishing company. There's also usually a marketing team that, if nothing else, chimes in on whether to acquire the book so there is some salary cost there. Even if the editing is outsourced (which it usually is these days to some extent--either the copy editing, proofing or both if both are done) that runs 1200 dollars or so. The artwork is in that same neighborhood, depending on whether it's original art (usually fantasy) or stock photos. But even with stock photos, some publishers hire a separate font expert to design the fonts and placement. I worked with an artist who did work for big publishers (he did the cover for Under Withc Aura) but he didn't do the fonts for companies. He was also the photographer for cover art in cases when the publisher wanted a particular cover done. He'd do the art, the layout design and then turn it over to the font expert. For a photo shoot, he'd get more than just 1000 dollars because he was paid for the photos as well as the artwork involved in putting them together into a cover (For example, with Under Witch Aura, he did the photo of the background clouds. We bought the photo of the girl. I can't remember if he did the white feather photo himself, but I think he did that photo as well as the dream catcher photo). He did all the blending/fading in and so on. The fonts were not professionally done as we were matching the ones from book one. He did some highlighting/shadowing, but we went with that since I didn't want to change book one at the time.
Publishers don't spend much on ads or placement except for the largest names, but they are doing some advertising. I know one author whose publisher has taken out two bookbub ads--so there's a couple thousand there. I don't think the cost to produce the average book is 50k, but it's probably 5 to 10. Better selling authors get 1. more of a cut in royalties 2. better marketing budgets 3. better artwork so they are more expensive to produce, but the publishers expect to get that back. They get larger print runs of the print books too so there's actually cost savings there so long as the print copies sell.
There are several publishers now that produce only ebooks (or have an arm that does so) to save on the printing costs. They will then do print and audio if the book makes enough/sells enough. This is likely to become more common. It was the model I was using for quite a while, although I'm thinking of breaking the rules. I already have found I must have print versions and I'm considering doing audio.
The printing and storing of paperbacks/hardbacks is expensive and getting more so because shipping costs have gone up. In this last round of agreements between the publishers and Amazon, Amazon upped the cost of storing the books before shipment as well as "placement" costs on the site.
All that long and boring said, I agree with you. The ebooks should at least be the same price as the paperback, not more. It does cost me extra to print (and I only do POD) but the bulk of time and effort is done by that time.