Just like old home week...or my first post here.
Here's the problem in a nutshell. Mass production is based on taking a design (in this case an edited book) and amortizing the cost of the design over a long production run. The longer the run the more profitable. Too short of a run, it's a loss. You incur the design cost no matter whether or not you produce the product at all. The cost of production (not design) has to be the major cost of the product, or else somebody else will make it significantly cheaper and undercut you.
This works as long as there are significant costs to produce the product. When the cost approach zero, the whole paradigm fails. And that's what is happening now with digital products.
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