Quote:
Originally Posted by Hellmark
Many of those extra expenses are only spent once, and are rather low, so the entire expense gets spread out over the sale of every book....
|
The paper and shipping costs for books are allegedly around 12%.
A popular book will actually have at least two rounds of major expenses -- one for the hardcover, one for the paperback. Most of the sales are also happening around the time that the big expenses are incurred. I.e. a book in the back catalog doesn't incur big expenses but isn't a big seller either.
Meanwhile, the publisher has to recoup the initial costs and has ongoing issues to attend to (e.g. managing production and distribution, watching for copyright violations etc). From what I understand, most books don't break even.
There are also new expenses for publishers and retailers with ebooks, including conversion, bandwidth and data hosting costs.
And don't forget that list price on a hardcover is around $26. If an ebook sale cannibalizes a hardcover sale, it is currently unclear if that extra revenue is lost. Maybe the buyer will spend it on another book - but not necessarily by the publisher of that hardcover - or on something else altogether (e.g. DVD's, video games etc).
Some expenses go away when you shift to ebooks, but not as much as most people assume.