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Quote:
Originally Posted by riemann42
Amazon, and to a much lesser extent BN, did ebooks a huge disservice by selling them so cheap. Now there are actually people who rant about books costing more than $9.99, tagging them on Amazon, etc. The damage is done, I think, but we'll see. Maybe people will get used to $14, $15, even $20 for a new release.
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Not sure I can agree with this. Publishers normally price a new hardback book anywhere from $20 to $30 yet Amazon and others have been able to sell them for much lower and I am sure that still at a profit for them otherwise they would be out of business. While I don’t know the process, logic dictates that a book retailer has to pay the publishing company a fixed amount per book regardless of the selling price ie if the publishing company wants $5 profit per book Amazon has to pay them that amount regardless if they sell the book for only $5. If so why would the publishing company lose money on a ebook vs a hardback book?
So Publishing company X suggests a price of $25 and wants $5 of revenue per book. Amazon sells it for $20 (still making a profit for them even having a bigger discount than $5) and gives the publisher its $5.
Now same scenario with ebook. Because of savings associated with eBooks let’s say its suggested price is now $20 yet Amazon sells it for $15 (still for a profit). The publisher still gets its $5 per book.
From a different POV if the printing costs are 10% of retail value (per publishers comments) and we assume another 10% for storage and distribution costs then we still have a cost savings of that about $5 to $6 per book.
This doesn’t include the cost associated with the return of books to the publisher which are none for ebooks but can be substantial for physical books.
What doesn’t make sense is to be able to buy a hardback book for $15 and pay $14 for the ebook.
Quote:
Originally Posted by riemann42
One more note: Publishers have to get good at notifying sellers to lower the price when a paperback is released. That's part of the whole deal, right?
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Yes. But this should be automatic ie when they get the paperbacks then the ebooks should drop accordingly (cheaper than paperbacks BTW).