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Originally Posted by rlauzon
Paper costs more than recycled electrons. Ink costs more than recycled electrons. I can send 100K of data over the internet far cheaper than I can send 100 books via UPS.
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Again, you're simply ignoring my points. Paper costs 50 cents for a mass market paperback, and DRM costs 50 to 75 cents, which is more. Warehousing and shipping costs are offset by higher royalties to authors. Electrons never figured into my post, you're just making stuff up.
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Yet another reason why DRM is stupid.
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Well, I agree with you there. But right now, no major publisher will allow their books to be sold as ebooks without it.
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That's a problem with the retailers. They should be telling the publishers to eat the cost if they demand it.
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Retailers can say that all day long, but then the publishers simply say, "so don't sell my books as ebooks." The publishers dictate the terms and it is quite difficult to get them to budge even a little. So the choice for a retailer is, either sell all small publisher books that don't require encryption, or pay for the DRM.
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Once the eBook is created, the cost of reproducing it is $0. So "economies of scale" don't even factor in. If the publisher is living in the 21th century, they should be doing everything electronically anyway - so creating that first eBook should be nearly free in the first place.
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Clearly you have never run a business yourself. Overhead is things like: the rent on the office where the workers are. The pay for the software developers and maintence people who keep the web server running, the phone bill, electricity. The publishers create the ebook files, not the retailers. Until you are covering those costs it's hard to cut prices.
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That's due to proprietary formats and DRM. Remove those and the support calls will disappear.
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And so will the customers, because the publishers will not let the latest stephen king novel to be published as an ebook, and the big name authors are primarily what brings in the consumers.
Look, if you contend it's so easy for retailers to come online with ebooks and make a killing at these prices, then you should just start your own ebook retail operation and reap the huge profits you assume are being made. Should be simple!