Quote:
Originally Posted by mbovenka
When you are an Amazon or BOL.COM, yes, it pretty much is that simple (if it isn't, you don't have your internal ducks in a row!) . The online infrastructure you mention which you need to sell anything (be it bits or tangible stuff) is already in place.
When you have nothing, building it isn't free, no. But even then you need that infrastructure anyway, whether you sell bits or paper. So paper still costs more to handle.
External factors may skew things (like the Dutch VAT difference between ebooks and paper books) but from a pure cost perspective ebooks always win. The only question is by how much, and the numbers I have seen bandied about point at 25-30% (which, actually, is roughly the price difference between ebook and paper I see for Dutch books when both editions exist).
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If I recall correctly, the cost of storage and inventory tax out weight the actual cost of printing a book by quite a bit. The actual printing costs have dropped way, way down over the years and continues to drop.
The main cost for printing was, at one time, the actual setting up of the layout of the book, rather than the physical cost of ink and paper.