ANOTHER "Why Do Ebooks Cost So Much?" ARTICLE

[Elfwreck]

It’s too early to tell whether self-published, digital-only titles will have any effect on the publishing industry.

Nah, nobody knows if anyone's reading any substantial numbers of self-published ebooks, nor if they're choosing to do so instead of buying DRM-infested titles.

Plz to ignore Konrath's bank account and Smashwords' growth. Move along; nothing to see here.

[SneakySnake]

I can't read any of CyGuy's posts! I scroll quickly past. Headache time.

[JSWolf]

CyGuy, can you please change your avatar? The one you have is annoying to be kind.

[SameOldStory]

Hit the ESC key. That stops it.

[crich70]

I can't see that ebooks should cost a lot myself. Granted someone has to put them in the proper format for ereaders but that shouldn't take more than a few hrs per book at most. And it's not like they have to ware house 1000's of copies of each book I would think. I mean if you and me both download the same title, say "Dracula" for example, aren't we downloading the same book? I mean say we both use epub format for example. Aren't we just both getting a copy of the same file? The original stays on the publisher's server unlike when you buy a pbook. And there isn't a cost for gas to get the book from their warehouse to the book store either. The storage cost is part of the electric bill for them I would think. And with several 100,000 books out there for sale surely they cover that pretty easily.

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

CyGuy, can you please change your avatar? The one you have is annoying to be kind.

Done...

[JayCeeEll]

And of course everyone here already ready knows there is a one word answer to all these spurious costs and it is ...

...Bean.

If such a small publisher can do it so well then any arguments by the big boys are just dinosaurs roaring at the approaching comet!

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by JayCeeEll

And of course everyone here already ready knows there is a one word answer to all these spurious costs and it is ...

...Bean.

If such a small publisher can do it so well then any arguments by the big boys are just dinosaurs roaring at the approaching comet!

Actually, I think an even better example might be Smashwords... and the best of all would be the PG, Manybooks.net and Feedbooks sites that support many different formats and yet give away their books, relying on charity to keep running. I suspect that none of those sites has what one might call an extremely powerful data farm and yet I believe I read that P.G. has about 100,000 books downloaded every month.

--
Bill

[EowynCarter]

[QUOTE=CyGuy;1085552]

Originally Posted by SameOldStory

Why Do Ebooks Cost So Much?

“People would have heart attacks if they knew all the costs associated with digital publishing,” says Maja Thomas, senior vice president of the Hachette Book Group’s digital division. Tacking an e onto a book requires antipiracy software, digital warehousing, extra legal support, and programmers to adapt each title for Android, iPhone, Kindle, and all the other formats. That’s on top of the regular costs of turning a manuscript into a finished product.

Antipiracy software should be illegal, remove that one. Digital warehousing is super-cheap, 8TB redundant drive arrays are a couple thousand at the most. Remove that one. Extra legal support, maybe. Programmers to adapt each title is very misleading, hire a high school student to format shift for you, minimum wage plus free books will snag a million applicants. "...turning a manuscript into a finished product." is misleading as well, the manuscript is already in digital format.
The complaints overall are just false. The price of an eBook should be half the cost of the cheapest paperback copy of the book.

Adapting books to format, that's an editor's job, not a programer's.
There is a few things you forgetting -> server maintenance, requires people, buying new stuff. The website to seel the e-books, someone needs to be paid to do it (and again, both software / hardware maintenance).
And then taxes, building to house all that, people for support, and so on. Putting e-books on a server, in itself, don't cost much. It's everything that goes around.

I quite agree about the anti piracy software

[bear4hunter]

Yesterday, I had some small talk with a guy working for Random House (Germany), we talked about eReader and eBooks and the eBook pricing as well.

At least in Germany, retail prices for books are all fixed by the publishers, so no matter were you buy it, you always pay the same price.

I do understand how they calculate: they consider the amount of copies they expect to sell, and calculate retail prices based on translation costs (there are not that many german authors on the bestselling lists) etc.

There is one point the publishers here in Germany still ignore: as they see it, with very few devices sold, they see sold eBooks as not sold pBooks, as just a shift in the medium.

I told him the example of Stieg Larssons Kindle Edition, selling over a million copies, and that I doubt, this million eCopies had to be seen as one million not sold pCopies. I really doubt, that the people who bought the Kindle Edition, would have bought the pBook if the Kindle device was not that popular und widespread available. So as I see it, with enough devices sold, eBooks are to be considered as additional business, and not as substitutional business like they are seeing it now.

In the long term, I think they will notice a growth in the number of overall copies sold with eReader becoming more available, and reconsider the price calculation models, or lower the prices in general.

[bill_mchale]

[QUOTE=EowynCarter;1087835]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

Adapting books to format, that's an editor's job, not a programer's.
There is a few things you forgetting -> server maintenance, requires people, buying new stuff. The website to seel the e-books, someone needs to be paid to do it (and again, both software / hardware maintenance).
And then taxes, building to house all that, people for support, and so on. Putting e-books on a server, in itself, don't cost much. It's everything that goes around.

I quite agree about the anti piracy software

I don't think anyone really claims that there is no costs associated with ebooks, its just we think that the publishers are deliberately overestimating them in order to jack the prices up. Baen, is able to publish Mission of Honor as an ebook for $6.00 while it is still selling the hardback. Yet Baen has been one of the most successful publishers both in ebooks and paper books in the last few years. Now why is it impossible for other publishers to do it for less than that $10?

--
Bill

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JayCeeEll

And of course everyone here already ready knows there is a one word answer to all these spurious costs and it is ...

...Bean.

Or even ...Baen

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

Actually, I think an even better example might be Smashwords...

Baen is such a good example because they are a traditional paper book publisher, with editors, designers, distribution; books printed and shipped to mainstream bookstores all over the US and some internationally; paying advances and royalties to authors. And yet for over 10 years they've been releasing all their publications (yes, including their first edition $25 hardbacks) as ebooks for $6 or less, without DRM, two weeks before the paper books hit store shelves, with no geographical restrictions.

So whenever a traditional publisher tries to justify high ebook prices with talk of problems of piracy, of lessening the value of paper books, of the need to hold back the ebook release date, of the expense of ebook production, of contract problems........ Baen!

[SameOldStory]

[QUOTE=EowynCarter;1087835]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

Adapting books to format, that's an editor's job, not a programer's.
There is a few things you forgetting -> server maintenance, requires people, buying new stuff. The website to seel the e-books, someone needs to be paid to do it (and again, both software / hardware maintenance).
And then taxes, building to house all that, people for support, and so on. Putting e-books on a server, in itself, don't cost much. It's everything that goes around.

I quite agree about the anti piracy software

" and programmers to adapt each title for Android, iPhone, Kindle, and all the other formats." - Maja Thomas, senior vice president of the Hachette Book Group’s digital division.

That's a quote from the story. Not me.

As for the rest of the stuff, That is effectively irrelevant.

Much of what you say that the publisher needs, they already have. Random House for instance, Employees 5,432 (as of December 31, 2009).

If the costs were so high you wouldn't have companies like Smashwords and many other independent companies staying in business.

I take some of that back. I'm pretty sure that the top people in Smashwords and Baen aren’t making as much as the top people at Random House. NOW there is an expense.

[Elfwreck]

Always fun to see price breakdowns comparing ebooks to print that totally ignore DRM:

an ebook at a $12.99 price point:

$12.99 Suggested retail price
$9.09 Wholesale proceeds to publisher
$0.00 Production, storage & shipping
$0.50 Pre-press: cover design, typesetting and copy-editing
$0.78 Marketing
$3.25 Author royalties
$4.57 Publisher’s gross margin

So... how much does DRM cost, out of that $12.99 book? Is that lumped into the fifty cent design costs?