Quote:
Originally Posted by ahi
The cost of printing an average size hardcover is probably about or under $1.
- Ahi
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Maybe in your country this is true, although it seems to contradict the numbers I know from my experience. And are you sure the cost of paper, transport to the warehouse, package and shipment to the customer/retailer is included in that?
All the publishers I've worked with in my country claim that about half the cost of the book is paper, printing, shipment, storage (ie. physical costs). The other half includes marketing costs, royalties, publisher's, middle-man's and retailer's profit. I have experience working with about 50 of them so I don't think they all are lying to me. So if the average book in Poland costs $12, about $6 is the cost of the physical aspect of the paper book. As for the ebooks it is still difficult to estimate the cost, because ebook market is tiny. Obviously, if a publisher makes an ebook that is going to be bought only by a handful of customers, they may not even recuperate the money they've put into maintaining a secure web server, buying software licenses etc.
Even so, some Polish publishers are still willing to offer their books in the ebook format (although mostly PDF with exotic DRM or non-DRM ones). Strange enough, they don't sell them through any major online bookshop, but off their own webpages. One example is here:
http://ksiazki.wydawnictwowam.pl/?app=ebook
This is actually one of the publishers I cooperate with and I think I won't reveal any trade secrets when I say that this part of their business is only a small fraction of the pbook business, but still it is so cheap to maintain that it pays for itself.
For the record: I am not an author but I manage book promotion on the Internet. However, in the past I also translated several books, so I have experience of several aspects of the publishing process.