Downloaded books cost how much?

[JSWolf]

if Fictionwise generated books on the fly from a single source, then they'd have all their books available in the same formats. Not so. So this cannot be true for them.

[delphidb96]

Okay,

Some factors to consider.

First, the publisher sells the books to the retailers for about 50% of the (cover) MSRP. So that means the physical costs involved in 'making' the book must be less than that amount or they'd not make a profit. Depending upon the number of actual copies printed, printing, binding and storage/fulfillment makes up between 35%-50% of that (larger print runs means lower printing costs). The rest is for author's advance, copy-editing, cover design, proofreading, administrative (gotta pay those executive assistants and secretaries) and - of course - marketing. So on a 'first book' release, I'd expect the percentage taken up by production marketing and admin to run around 65% of PUBLISHER'S price. That leaves 35% to cover fulfillment and distribution costs if the publisher uses an outside fulfillment service - and many do - which means the 'profit' (assuming all books from the run sell) is about 30% of the publisher's price and 15% of retail.

Second, most publishers DON'T create a single intermediate file (say in Word's .doc or .rtf format) which gets stored, edited and used as the base for creating the final printing file. Nope. They do it the 'modern' and 'computerized' version of laying it all out on printing plates for proofing. That's right, they 'create' the file directly in something like Quark Xpress or Pagemaker. And they do it all over again for each format, HC, TPB, MMPB. In the publishing company *I* worked for, they even went so far as to delete the Quark file after a 'reasonable' print run, requiring that they re-create that file if sales went spectacularly well - in the specific format!

Third, it is a stone-cold bitch to pull the text files from older Quark and Pagemaker files.

Plus, many working in the mainstream publishing industry (as opposed to small-press publishers) are afraid of computer technology. They *BELIEVE* the tall tales and Chicken Little screams of doomsayers like the RIAA. And in that light, all of us ebookers are nothing but thieves and thief-wannabes ever eager to steal their precious profits.

Derek

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Fictionwise (I think), Manybooks, Munsey's. That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Remember that many commercial sites (Like Connect) are enamored of DRM and, so, don't support multiple formats.

Of course, if we would settle on a standard, open format for eBooks, this point becomes moot.



Then we are, again, talking about a 1 time fee that is spread over all the books sold - and represents an insignificant part of the selling price.



This was already done in creating the pBook and should not be a cost of an eBook.

From my point of view, creating the pBook generates 99% of what is needed to do the eBook. The only thing left to do is click-Save As-Upload to someplace like Fictionwise.



We got a glimpse of this when a publisher-person posted some information to Slashdot earlier this year. The numbers said that upwards of 75% of the selling price represented the physical-ness of the book.



Business wheeling-and-dealing.

If Amazon can promise "we'll buy 100,000 and you get no damaged books back from us" they can probably work out a good deal with the publisher.

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Third, it is a stone-cold bitch to pull the text files from older Quark and Pagemaker files.

A-frackin'-men to that! I've got ten years of magazine files here in Quark 4. Ugh!

[HeffeD]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Plus, many working in the mainstream publishing industry (as opposed to small-press publishers) are afraid of computer technology. They *BELIEVE* the tall tales and Chicken Little screams of doomsayers like the RIAA. And in that light, all of us ebookers are nothing but thieves and thief-wannabes ever eager to steal their precious profits.

Misinformation goes a long way...

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

if Fictionwise generated books on the fly from a single source, then they'd have all their books available in the same formats. Not so. So this cannot be true for them.

Well, like I said, I wasn't sure about them.

But your statement not necessarily true. Some formats are closed, requiring special programs to create the eBook content. These formats cannot be rendered on the fly simply because there is no way to do it.

So they may be a hybrid site - the open formats are created on the fly while the closed formats are done by hand - and only for a select set of eBooks.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Second, most publishers DON'T create a single intermediate file (say in Word's .doc or .rtf format) which gets stored, edited and used as the base for creating the final printing file. Nope. They do it the 'modern' and 'computerized' version of laying it all out on printing plates for proofing.

Then I'll fall back on something I said a long time ago: Publishers are dinosaurs and like all good dinosaurs, they will evolve or die.

It sounds like they are on the path to extinction.

[delphidb96]

RLauzon,

Not really true for any 'closed' format. Given a decent script and full knowledge of the formatting command set for those formats, the process can be quite automated. Further, for any of the ebook formats that are commercially viable today, it only takes *ONE* successful creation to generate ebook sales from numerous copies. That's far different than DT because each and every copy has to be 'correct' and 'complete' as it hits the store shelves.

Even with the complexity of formatting for each of the commercial ebooks, ebooks are far more cost-friendly than dead tree.

Derek

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Well, like I said, I wasn't sure about them.

But your statement not necessarily true. Some formats are closed, requiring special programs to create the eBook content. These formats cannot be rendered on the fly simply because there is no way to do it.

So they may be a hybrid site - the open formats are created on the fly while the closed formats are done by hand - and only for a select set of eBooks.