Quote:
Originally Posted by MerLock
I'm not sure what the perecentages of a publishers cost are, but are they considering the fact that as ebook demand rises, the shift towards ebooks will save the company money in terms of distrbution and production? I think we are just asking that those savings be passed on to us.
Older titles will most likely continue to sell as ebooks because they take no shelf space and can remain in the digital store for all eternity. That's another source of continued revenue.
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Production costs are a relatively small portion of the publisher's outlay, and distribution costs are borne by the distributor not the publisher. So publishers don't see a large portion of the savings by going e.
People often tout the reduced marginal costs of ebooks as a reason for lower prices. Yes, once the initial outlay has been paid off the marginal cost becomes very low (mostly just royalties and DRM licensing fees if applicable).
The problem is that you need to pay off those initial costs first, before the low marginal cost can save you - and most ebooks don't sell enough copies to do that. You can't amortize your setup costs over ten thousand copies if you only sell five hundred, and that's the situation ebooks are in now.