Quote:
Originally Posted by Pardoz
Going down the list:
1) Stays constant, obviously. Of course that means that if you sell e-books in addition to printed copies, the cost is spread among more sales, and the costs for all formats should go down. But you can take as given that publishers will always claim that all e-book sales are cannibalizing a paper sale, even if total sales numbers increase.
2) Is a non-issue on many commercial e-books, since they don't include cover art.
3) Again, a non-issue on the vast majority of books, regardless of format, since they receive precisely zero marketing or publicity from the publisher.
4) A middle case, as you pointed out yourself. Obviously *some* costs are involved here.
5) Again, stay constant overall, but again, see (1) above on why this should mean cheaper prices on all formats, but won't.
You've left out a huge piece of the actual cost of a paper book, though - returns. When 35% of your print run ends up pulped in a landfill that drives up the proportion of the cost each individual book sold needs to recoup significantly. Returns on e-books run in the tens and hundreds, not the tens and hundreds of thousands, and that's an enormous saving.
Further, do keep in mind that the current aberrant reliance on creating a certain number of hardcover bestsellers per year (and bestsellers are made, not born) is a comparatively recent thing that has a lot more to do with tax law than anything inherent in the act of publishing.
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Have you checked the prices of books lately? Hardcover books haven't moved in price in the last decade and paperbacks haven't moved in the last fifteen years. Holding a constant price for that amount of time is close enough to reducing prices for my money.
Some commercial ebooks don't include cover art, but many of the ones I buy do. So it's an issue.
Publishers do not market directly to the reader, they market to the trade and so most of their marketing is invisible to the general public.
The other point that seems to be missed is that publishers have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders to try to increase profits. If publishers increase sales by expanding into a new market and then immediately reduce prices on other products so as not to increase their profits, then they are not doing their jobs. In fact, it sounds pretty communist to me.