Quote:
Originally Posted by Xerxes
I know I'm late to this, but where does all the money it takes to make those books go compared to making one small files that sits on a server.
|
The majority of work put into producing a book produces a file somewhere, probably in a program called InDesign. From there it goes either through an export process which includes another round of quality assurance (except for the lazier publishers who don't bother and are responsible for the crap eBook results you sometimes see) or it goes to the printers who are a relatively high volume sub-industry not adding a huge margin to the final product.
Then both books and eBooks get distributed someway. For example, it might go to amazon as an eBook or a redistribution warehouse to be sold on amazon as a pbook. In the former case amazon's dealing with the cost of bandwidth for browsing the catalog, and handling merchant transactions and customer service and all that. They will take 70% of the sale price of the book sending back 30% to the publisher. In the case of the paper books, I don't know how it's divided up, I would guess the publisher or redistribution center got to pick those prices.
Obviously some of the pbooks go to real physical stores, on semi-trucks or UPS trucks, or whatever, and take up real space on a real shelf that some other book might've better suited. There will be employees to pay that stack those books up and sell them to people, and look for the books that are kinda hard to find since every store organizes things differently (take a look at Borders children's section where they mix alphabetical ordering between author last name and series first word!) and then eventually add on the same costs of customer service and merchant transactions and all that.
So basically, either way you go, eBook or pBook you're touch potentially numerous hands. Though it's possible to vastly cut the fat with eBooks, it doesn't remove the effort going into the actual book production which only starts with the author, before editors and typesetters and artists for covers, and all that come into play.
eBook and pBook cost differences don't become apparent until a book has been published for quite some time, particularly after its popularity has died. At this point, the physical stores can't afford the space dedicated to it anymore. They carry few or no books resulting in zero sales. While the eBook can continue to take up a row in a database someplace and show up in relevant searchers or even resurge into popularity because of whatever unexpected reason the public gives it at the moment.
Monetarily the eBook has a better chance at benefiting from what is known as the "long tail" but that whole theory is alway embattled for validity so I won't get into it.
Still, when comparing new releases, there isn't much savings for that eBook compared to the pBook when everything's accounted for.