[Timboli]

I don't disagree with some of what you both say, but the idea that authors are just getting by, as you are seeming to infer, just flies in the face of what I know. Though I don't doubt that is the reality for a good number of them. How many and why, is really the question.

As I have mentioned before, they need to change their model, as it is outdated. There are publishers out there who have already done so.

And there are many authors who have given up their traditional publishers and gone Indie. Trust and believability are thin on the ground.

P.S. I am not saying that any price guarantees a profit. However, all things going well they would have a base price to work on. And I still fail to see why ebooks need to incur more profit, thus be a higher price. If ebooks did not exist, then that option would not exist. Physical book prices are pretty much what they have been for a long time, pre-ebooks. So from every which way I look at it, ebooks are being used to grab more profit. You can say it is helping more to offset the real cost, but that is kind of meaningless. Most of the cost in a book is production and providing costs. So what is really happening, is that ebooks are keeping the old model alive for those who don't use ebooks.

If you take physical books completely out of the equation for a moment, and look at what is involved just for them, it all becomes much clearer. With an ebook, there is no need to get a return on something that has incurred all the other costs. There is no book sitting on a shelf costing money and not yet paid for. Of course, I am being simplistic with that, because there are costs for every book, regardless of format ... editing, artwork, promotion, etc. But the outlay before sale is minuscule in comparison, so risks are far less, and the royalty model eases the burden. The losses on a failure are far smaller and the need for a large return on release are barely there.