Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Jack B Nimble
True, but the basic idea still stands. If book premiers in paperback, the ebook still comes out some months later, at a substantial discount.
|
I see no reason the publisher can't make the eBook available at the same time as the paperback at a similar price, then discount it later. That's assuming no DRM or very unobtrusive DRM. If the publisher wants to "rent" me the book so that I can only read it on one device and can't pass it along when I'm done, the price should always be drastically lower than a long-lived solution like paper.
Not that publisher costs have that much to do with retail prices, but I wonder what the typical cost to produce, store, and ship a paperback book is, when you take into account average print runs, stripped or discounted books, etc.? What about retail location costs, e.g. floor space, staff, etc. at the bookstore? The author gets their pittance, the publishers pay for some amount of marketing, editors and copyeditors need to get paid, etc., and those costs probably wouldn't change much, but I'm just wondering what proportion of the actual costs is due to the physical medium. (And the electronic medium isn't free, either-- server storage, system administration, etc. are all involved, but I would expect costs to be much lower.)