Quote:
Originally Posted by pshrynk
Yet another aspect of the question. What does it cost to produce an ebook? A lot of debate has been tossed out that "proves" that it is either just as much as a pbook or next to nothing. Some education by publishers could go a long way.
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I do know that a fair amount goes into promotion/advertising. I'm assuming that those costs would be borne equally by ebooks and pbooks.
However, there are large amounts of inventory returns that the publisher has to eat that are non-existent with ebooks.
I doubt that the 99 cent model would work for ebooks only because .... well, it works on a per song basis for the music industry, but then you have to consider that it relates to a per album cost of roughly $20. So, the music publisher doesn't really lose anything by selling the album piecemeal, and it's cost effective for the consumer (compared to the time involved in pirating one song).
To do that for books would involve selling them by the chapter or by the section ... might work, but probably not. However, even given promotional costs, the price of ebooks should be much lower than their p siblings.
As for promotion, I doubt that the publishing houses will ever completely die away if only because they do have the promotional punch to make a book or a series of books a major success. If the Harry Potter books had just been self published, they never would have taken off as fast, if at all. The readers ultimately make the book a hit (or miss), but it's the hype that kick starts it. And you've got to have some serious money to back the hype machine.