Why do many e-books cost more than paperback?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

...or go on with inertial resistance to anything new and different... and better

Investments like that are always risks. If they don't work out, you can either keep throwing good money after bad, or you can cut and go for something else. If you've got too much tied up in buggy whips to get out, consider yourself screwed.

I've made sure my publishing model allows me to pick and choose whatever formats I wish to distribute my novels in, so I don't end up trying to sell buggy whips to Scion drivers. That's smart business.

[yvanleterrible]

Do you think the point of no return has been reached?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Do you think the point of no return has been reached?

I think it's very close, for the reasons I've illustrated. The paper industry is in for hard times very soon, either a complete retooling for cleaner product and new distribution channels, or at least much less product, as electronic media ascend.

(For the record, my wife is in the press-printing business. Some days, she hates me.)

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

(For the record, my wife is in the press-printing business. Some days, she hates me.)

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

'Tain't funny, McGee!

[orcinus]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

<Click><Click><Click> There. I just created an eBook. Cost: $0. If DRM is adds to the cost of the eBook, then only a few sales are needed to break even.

A single book does not a publisher make
And i think i've mentioned marketing costs up there too. As you grow bigger, "upkeep" costs go up as well...

Originally Posted by NatCh

Except for Baen, who sells their's for ~$6 each.

Baen is small, agile and progressive. And a fairly atypical publisher at that

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by orcinus

A single book does not a publisher make
Baen is small, agile and progressive. And a fairly atypical publisher at that

Even for Baen the e-book revenue is quite small, bigger than at others sure, but I doubt that it gets to 10% even for their top seller authors. Mr. Flint posted a breakdown of his earnings, with actual number of books sold, hc, pb, and sell-through for several of his 163* books through 12/31/06 (for example:
* 1633
* HC net sales: 17,800
* Paperback net sales: 62,000
* Sell-through (HC): 71%
* Sell-through (ppbk): 62%
* Total royalties earned: $108,800),

and then breaking down his earnings, e-books/foreign rights/misc together came to less than 10%, with hc at about 60% and pb at 30%

For Baen e-books are a wonderful way to get publicity, keep series going, make a little money, and develop interesting initiatives that may pay off big in the future (JBUniverse, e-reprints of various series like Liaden, Godstalker, Lt. Grimes, Codominium).

They are really showing how to do e-books, but and this is a big but, they still make the vast majority of their money from print.

The bottom line for e-books right now is twofold:

- minuscule market so no price discovery, publishers offering a product that people do not want, but not really caring since external pressures are not high

- no digital content business model which produces revenue comparable to physical content yet proven, so only external pressure will force publishers' hand

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

I have a book in my possession that has been printed in 1755, that is 252 years old and in good condition.
I'd love to see an ebook standard that will last that long, or even a computer for that matter.

This is a common refrain, but I think its spurious. After all throughout history the fraction of society's total information output that is preserved has been increasing, not decreasing. Sure a paper book or a stone tablet will last longer than a CD or a disk drive, but that doesn't mean much. The cost/difficulty of making copies of paper books/stone tablets means that most of them wont be preserved over the long term, while digital information will.

[JSWolf]

Digital information can be backup and restored if need be. A paper copy can be damaged and never able to be retrieved. If you have a book that is out of print and you cannot find a copy for sale, then if yours gets damaged, you lose it forever. But if you say backup your ebooks onto say multiple DVD (just to be safe) and store one copy offsite, then if your house blows up, the copy will still be accessible at sometime in the future.

[Bob Russell]

Hmm. I think there's a difference between societal preservation of a work versus personal preservation of a work.

An individual is more likely to lose content in various transient formats (especially with DRM). We just don't back up well, and it's often easier to lose track of a file than a paper book.

But at the big-picture level, digital preservation is much easier than preserving a paper book, and content owners are probably going to be very careful to protect content with backups (which are easily done with e-books as opposed to paper). Even in the worst case scenario, it can be recovered from others that have a copy, so complete loss these days should be less than in paper-only days like kovidgoyal has argued.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

'Tain't funny, McGee!

BTW, I have to admit, Steve, that I find the situation with your e-books in contrast to your wife's work in publishing to be quite amusing also! Even if it is at your expense...sorry!

[da_jane]

I think that there is a fundamental misunderstanding at what goes into the publication of a book. The major costs that are excised in ebook is a) shipping; b) storage and c) printing. The costs of an editor, the artwork, the advertising, and distribution costs (although reduced) still exist.

The creation of the ebook costs nothing, but the creation of a published work, regardless of format, does have costs. True, there are fewer copies that need to be sold in order to break even and that is advantageous to authors, publishers and readers, but there are still costs.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by orcinus

Baen is small, agile and progressive. And a fairly atypical publisher at that

And those are all reasons we love them.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

The bottom line for e-books right now is twofold:

- minuscule market so no price discovery, publishers offering a product that people do not want, but not really caring since external pressures are not high

- no digital content business model which produces revenue comparable to physical content yet proven, so only external pressure will force publishers' hand

Hmm. Where do you see the fact that reading hardware which most people would consider decent has only very recently come into the world fitting into that paradigm?

[Robert Marquard]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Let's throw one more factor into the mix: DRM actually adds to the cost of a book. Whatever DRM scheme is chosen will have to either be developed in house or contracted out and licensed, for both the books and the reading software. I've heard somewhere from a person or two involved in the industry that the cost for that is not as small as it might seem it ought to be, and it's a fixed cost per unit.

It also creates the need for a helpdesk. See which forum on the Mobipocket forums has the most messages. The Webscriptions forum on Baens Bar has much less messages and usually about bugs in the books where the production process failed.

BTW "publishers are a conservative lot" is from Jim Baen.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by da_jane

I think that there is a fundamental misunderstanding at what goes into the publication of a book. The major costs that are excised in ebook is a) shipping; b) storage and c) printing. The costs of an editor, the artwork, the advertising, and distribution costs (although reduced) still exist.

The creation of the ebook costs nothing, but the creation of a published work, regardless of format, does have costs. True, there are fewer copies that need to be sold in order to break even and that is advantageous to authors, publishers and readers, but there are still costs.

I agree with this assessment... although the last point, number of books to break-even point, depends on the cost of the book. If the public will not accept the sale of an e-book at hardback (or even paperback) prices, then a larger number of books will have to be sold to hit breakeven.

This might be one of those areas where publishers will have to accept the need for a lower price and larger volume of books sold, and figure out new marketing methods to sell more books.