Hrm... Hopefully Sony will spread the $9.99 price around a bit more. It's not a great plan to promise a price drop and have it be, well, a drop in the bucket.
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Originally Posted by fugazied
$15.37 for an ebook, wow they must be getting some profit on those. No middle man book store, no printing costs, no transport costs. Just money for the 'publisher' (what do they do again?) and author.
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As far as I understand, Sony has to pay the publisher a wholesale price for each book sold. My best guess is that for a new book it's over $10 per unit, less for older books (unfortunately I don't have exact figures). I.e. Sony, Amazon and B&N don't make any profit on a $9.99 brand-new best-seller, it's a loss leader.
Publishers actually do a big chunk of the work. They pay an advance to the writer; hire editors; handle legal issues; do the marketing and PR; manage distribution, and so forth. Most books lose money as well -- it's a handful that wind up generating most of the revenue -- so they are also supporting a lot of writers. Apparently, producing, transporting and warehousing paper copies isn't that big a chunk of the costs.
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Originally Posted by fugazied
I can't wait for one of the big name authors, like a Grisham to step away from a publisher and just put his ebook out independently, like Radiohead did with their music.
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It's quite possible, though it would have to be someone who can afford to hire a good PR / marketing staff.
However it's not going to happen any time soon, since ebooks are currently a tiny part of the market (1-2% iirc).