Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
For technical books, that pricing may not be ridiculous.
First, all books have costs that they incur regardless of whether they ever see print. There will be an advance paid to the author for rights to publish the book. There will be the time spent on the book by the editor, copy editor, proofreader, and art director, with some other folks like illustrators and contract lawyers also involved. And there will be an allocated share of general corporate overhead. All of these costs occur before the book is turned into a PDF file that can be sent to a printer as input to the imagesetter that will generated the plates the book is printed from. How much the book is priced at will be determined by what it costs to produce, and how many copies the publisher expects to sell.
Technical books are by nature expensive. They are costly to produce, go out of date quickly, and appeal to a relatively limited market.
Amazon can price the latest Dan Brown novel that will sell millions at $9.95 and do nicely, thank you. If O'Reilly and Associates tried to do that with their computer manuals, they'd be belly up and out of business in a heartbeat.
|
No one is asking that all books be $10 or less, just that as a whole books come down in price. Seems silly when some places want $27 for the ebook, when I can buy the paperbook from any store for $20 less.