Quote:
Originally Posted by jasonkchapman
Yes, but there is a long, vaunted history of industries reducing costs without reducing the price. Things just get repackaged.
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You can reduce cost all you want, but there's no realistic way the marginal cost of a physical book will ever approach that of an eBook.
Think of it this way...lets say a publisher prints a book, the first printing is 50K copies. It becomes a best seller so the do additional printings. Those printings all cost more to do. With an eBook, the initial cost is purchasing rights from the author, and then the work to get it electronic, which frankly these days, is probably almost nil, plus some proofreading and formatting. But for any single book I doubt is that much work, relatively. You then make it available online. That "run" is equal to infinity. All other costs are minor, cost of transmission, cost of storage...in most businesses today those are sunk costs anyway. So in effect, everything after the initial rights purchase and labor to translate to electronic format is profit.
What that makes me wonder more about is how authors negotiate rights with an electronic company. Do they get % of sales, or do they sell the right to sell 50K copies, thus making a sort of electronic run, sell rights per years, or in perpetuity?