Quote:
Originally Posted by bminata
Even in the scenario where some variables stay the same (promotion, proofread, up-front payment, etc) and publishers have to "subsidize less successful authors" and "no book stand on its own" as mentioned here, in e-publishing the cost for production, warehousing, distribution should be much less than in print. There's really no reason for publishers to insist the price for ebooks should be the same with printed books - other than profits.
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Just as another side point, one of the things that authors and agents have blogged about that hurts them the most is "returns." And I don't mean the real returns done by customers--I mean the bookstores ordering X amount of books and then "returning" them after only two weeks. Then when a customer orders the book, they order 5 and "return" 3 or 4 after two days. They pay nothing for returns so they don't have to work to sell them. If they decide the shelf needs more space, they rip the covers off, throw the books out and replace them.
A store that was closing in NY and moving a few streets down--RETURNED/scrapped every book in the store rather than move the books (was blogged about by a few agents a couple of years ago.) This type of thing adds huge and somewhat hidden costs that aren't there in ebooks (customers can return an ebook for a variety of reasons, but this is on a customer basis, not a bookstore one.)
So there are definite things within the industry that could be streamlined to save costs and some of those things should probably be looked at before worrying about delaying an ebook for 4 months...