Thread: What is with these Publishers?
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Old 01-14-2010, 06:08 PM   #161
Kali Yuga
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eBookNewbie123 View Post
This why I am saying sell it through Amazon. They already have everything in place. The datacenter, IT Staff the whole lot. Their datacenter was underused to the point they created Amazon Could Computing. Selling it through Amazon will cost them much less than printing, binding etc.
Please re-read my post. The "they" in the 2nd paragraph refers specifically to Amazon.

It does cost Amazon less to do this than a publisher, since they can scale up some existing infrastructure. But it still increases their costs, as they had to integrate this to a running system that needs extremely high availability, have developer costs, etcetera.

Also, the publisher charges Amazon a wholesale price for every book Amazon sells. So, let's say the publisher charges Amazon $10 for the ebook or the hardcover. It might cost Amazon $0.50 to deliver the ebook, and $1 to deliver the paper copy -- especially since Amazon charges more than it costs them to ship the paper book(s). Hardly a huge cost savings for Amazon.

I don't have the exact figures -- no one does, really, and it would be extremely difficult to calculate without full access to Amazon's transaction data, a skilled database programmer and a skilled accountant (and would vary greatly based on actual sales figures). But I'd be surprised if it costs Amazon all that much more to manage paper than it does to handle the ebooks, especially when you add in developer costs and customer service.

And as mentioned previously, it costs around 15% less for the publisher to make the ebook than it does the paper book, especially for larger publishing houses. So even if we think Amazon can save another 5%, we are not looking at anywhere near a 75-90% reduction in the price charged to the consumer.

That is, of course, assuming there is any reason to link the ebook price to actual costs; and there isn't. The price can be (economically and ethically) any amount above costs that the market will bear.

And much in the same way that if all you want to pay for a DVD is $5, don't be surprised if that cost preference freezes you out of a big part of what's available.
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