Quote:
Originally Posted by Daithi
When publishers sell books to bookstores they allow the bookstore to return the unsold portion of books, which are often then destroyed. So a bookstore can order 100 books, sell 50, and then return 50, which are destroyed. This means that if you bought one of these books then in reality you paid for both the book you read and the one that was destroyed. This practice shouldn't apply to ebooks, so ebooks should be cheaper.
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Ok, now this is interesting, and it's going to take a small stretch to understand this, but unsold books are costed on the basis of the production and fulfillment (shipping, storage, etc) costs only. There's no royalty, retailer profit, share of marketing, etc, because all of those cost are shared fixed or marginal costs that apply to books sold. The remaindering and pulping is an overhead cost that is capitalized evenly across the total number of sold pBooks and eBooks. Even if it was applied only to the cost of pBooks, it actually a very small part as printing and shipping represent typically less than $1 per title.
And, of course it complete ignores remaindering in place, which is where the books are not returned but instead toted to the bargain bin and highly discounted. Or pulped, where the cover is removed and shipped back for credit and the rest of the book supposedly destroyed.
Simply put, remaindering and pulping are not a huge expense given the number of pBooks sold, and therefore not a huge savings in favor of eBooks.