Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
Another point that we, here, like to stress is many of those fixed costs to prepare an e-book should already be sunk costs in preparation of the p-book. If paperbacks cost significantly less than hardcovers we still expect e-books in today's market to cost something less than paperbacks. And we are often disappointed.
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Yup -- I tried to convey that point in my post. Where I'm simply spreading my costs over more units sold, that's lovely. Unfortunately that's not always the case. In my situation, for example, I will have to decide whether to offer new books as e-only or print-only or both e- and print. If I choose something with an e-component I then have to decide on PDFs only or multiple formats, and whether or not to use some form of DRM. DRM costs money, but sales lost to piracy also cost money. PDFs are not the most attractive platform, but converting my books to anything else will be more expensive since they are already designed with PDFs in mind as what we deliver to the printer.
I'm not looking for sympathy -- this is, after all, my job. I'm just trying to get across some of the issues that publishers -- especially smaller ones -- have to face, since that seemed relevant to the topic of the thread. (And I take it not many publishers are all that forthcoming...). And hey, if you have great ideas on how to tackle my problems, I'd love to hear them!
