Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Book prices actually have little to do with "what you're getting"... they are largely arbitrary prices set by publishers, based solely on what they think they can get away with. This is the real reason Big Pubs can't agree on pricing... they just don't know what they can get away with yet.
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Not entirely.
Every book in a publisher's list has costs, including the advance to acquire the title, the line editing, copy editing, proofreading, and markup for publication, plus the cover design and art, plus an allocated share of corporate overhead, even before the book is actually printed, bound, warehoused, and distributed. Those costs will set a lower limit on how cheap a particular ebook
can be.
Pricing is far from arbitrary, though publishers will try to charge what the market will bear, just like any other business. The trick is determining what the market will bear.
I think it will eventually settle out to "No more than the mass market paperback cost".
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Dennis