[Mare of Earth]

Having just purchased the first two of the God Stalk series, did you notice that you can buy all of them for $25, or you can buy The God Stalker Chronicles (books 1 & 2), Seeker's Bane (books 3 & 4) and Blood & Ivory: A Tapestry for $17 total?

Something I am confused by - everyone always includes Marketing as one of the expenses in producing a book. Most of the books I buy don't have much in the way of marketing - maybe an email, or a mention on MobileRead. How much is spent on marketing?

Also - the base production costs - ebook or pbook - include things like proofreading, etc. Why don't they build the pricing model like this then:

Initial Production Costs (advertising, formatting, proofreading)
=
ebook
formatting
DRM (evil!)
webhosting
=
hardcover
formatting(print)
printing
distribution
=
paperback
formatting (print)
printing
distribution

I am sure there are other costs involved - however, why don't they pool the common production costs, then have a base price for the book before they split off for the specialized costs of the release format. ie. It costs 10k for initial production costs on a new book. You are going to produce three formats, so 10k/3 = 3.33k You have addt'l costs per edition - say 2k for ebook format, and you estimate you will sell 1.5k copies total production cost for ebook format = 3.33k+2k+profit margin (10%)+royalty (10%)= 6.396k/1.5k copies = $4.27 per ebook.

Of course, these numbers aren't "real", but it would be nice to actually see the production costs on a book, and see where the specific costs per format break down.

If they insist it costs so much to create an ebook, I want to see it in real numbers, so I can be an informed consumer!