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Old 06-18-2010, 10:41 AM   #286
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Old 06-18-2010, 10:43 AM   #287
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is deleted not the same as killed !!!!
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Old 06-18-2010, 10:47 AM   #288
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is deleted not the same as killed !!!!
I'm sure there are a few here who wish it were so. All seriousness aside, I just decided a friendly PM would be more appropriate since I was going way off topic (curiosity over a screen name).
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Old 06-18-2010, 11:57 PM   #289
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"Beside having to deal with PDF, the conversion into ePub or Mobi causes additional e-book specific production costs."

Lets see. Additional ebook conversion costs. Hmmmm

Maybe they download a pirated copy of their over priced book from the internet. Then, because the pirated copy stinks, they have to pay "additional staff" to clean it up. After cleaning it up they then have to change it, by hand, to each format (epub etc.).

OK. It makes sense now. He has staff telling him that it takes 3 people a week or 2 to convert to each ebook format.

Perhaps he should ask Kovid about Calibre.
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Old 06-19-2010, 10:44 AM   #290
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What many are missing here is the psychology of profit in the modern multinational.

I agree with all of the contributions above exposing that production of ebooks is far far less costly than that of paper books. Adding to that the savings in distribution and retailer margin, the only rational and logical conclusion that can be reached is that Publishers could easily sell ebooks at a significantly lower price than paper books and make the SAME profit.

....
Maybe, but probably at the moment the lower costs for the production of the ebook compared to a paper version also has to be earned back by a lot less sales (right now and in short to mid-term). So it might not be so easy yet to make statements on the profit yet.
Yes, once you have an ebook you can sell it for eternity without any new production costs. But the ebook market is still in development and we are still paying for early-adaptor status.
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Old 06-19-2010, 01:25 PM   #291
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Please accept this posting as formal notice of my intention to sue Mobileread for substantial personal damages. After reading the above line I was unable to stop laughing and my wife had to call an ambulance. I am only able to write this as a result of heavy sedation.
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Old 06-19-2010, 02:39 PM   #292
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Maybe, but probably at the moment the lower costs for the production of the ebook compared to a paper version also has to be earned back by a lot less sales (right now and in short to mid-term). So it might not be so easy yet to make statements on the profit yet.
Yes, once you have an ebook you can sell it for eternity without any new production costs. But the ebook market is still in development and we are still paying for early-adaptor status.
I am not 100% sure what you are saying. However let's remember what early-adopter status usually results from. New products in the electronics field for example cost much more at the beginning because of enormous development costs and the risk that a new product won't succeed. Hence the high price.
I see no evidence from anyone here or elsewhere of any significant development or initial investment costs sufficient to justify these high costs and hence my statement about the mind-set of the Publishers.
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Old 06-19-2010, 09:03 PM   #293
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I am not 100% sure what you are saying. However let's remember what early-adopter status usually results from. New products in the electronics field for example cost much more at the beginning because of enormous development costs and the risk that a new product won't succeed. Hence the high price.
I see no evidence from anyone here or elsewhere of any significant development or initial investment costs sufficient to justify these high costs and hence my statement about the mind-set of the Publishers.
You might be partly right, but I doubt it is as simple as that.
People are demanding not only all new books coming out as ebooks, but also the complete back-catalogue. In both cases currently the market is still relatively small, keep in mind we are still early adaptors and ebooks are still a luxury product even compared to normal books.

The publishers need to convert an immense amount of works to ebook-format. Which might be easy, but especially for older works needs quite some effort - scanning, OCR, editing (although evidence suggests this is too often skipped ), formatting etc..
This all is an investment, which needs to be recovered. As far as I know publishers don't usually swim in money, and borrowing it in the current market might be a bit expensive as well. So it to me makes some sense that the publishers want to regain their investments in an as short as possible time to be able to keep on putting out books. If the publishers in their current form have a future is a different question, but I think they have some added value in the process of creating books I want to read.
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Old 06-20-2010, 09:17 AM   #294
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I fully agree. E-Books should start out with fully editable files such as Word files. What I was trying to point out was formatting in Word is unstable (especially if illustrated). The formatting in PDFs is stable and that is probably why publishers like to use them for print ready copy instead of Word docs. That is probably the reason why many publishers are having to convert PDFs to e-books is all they retained of the original editted manuscripts were the print ready files, thinking they were all they would ever need (short-sighted thinking considering how cheap storage is now; it's not like they need to store hard copies).
But when are the publishers going to realize that this for NEW books? When are they going to take the author's original digital file (with all the edits and updates) and use that to generate the eBook editions? Sure there can be issues with graphics coming from Word. But if you have someone who knows how to deal with ePub, then these issues can be hand tweaked as needed. I've found that once you have a good ePub, Calibre does a good job converting to MS Reader and Mobipocket from there. So all we need is that good ePub edition starting from a good digital file that's not PDF or some other awful format.

The publishers could store the original document, the PDF, the print ready copy, and all the eBook copies for very little storage.
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Old 06-20-2010, 10:05 AM   #295
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The publishers could store the original document, the PDF, the print ready copy, and all the eBook copies for very little storage.
Certainly for books, that would be a negligible increase in storage costs and would give them so much more flexibility and to be perfectly honest if they had been in the habit of converting to pdf and then deleting other versions they were basically being idiots for how little space they would save.

Anyway, all these cries of ebooks not being significantly cheaper than paper editions are a red herring when ebooks are often still being sold at equal or higher prices than the paper editions of the same book.
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Old 06-20-2010, 12:24 PM   #296
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Originally Posted by Seli View Post
You might be partly right, but I doubt it is as simple as that.
People are demanding not only all new books coming out as ebooks, but also the complete back-catalogue. In both cases currently the market is still relatively small, keep in mind we are still early adaptors and ebooks are still a luxury product even compared to normal books.

The publishers need to convert an immense amount of works to ebook-format. Which might be easy, but especially for older works needs quite some effort - scanning, OCR, editing (although evidence suggests this is too often skipped ), formatting etc..
This all is an investment, which needs to be recovered. As far as I know publishers don't usually swim in money, and borrowing it in the current market might be a bit expensive as well. So it to me makes some sense that the publishers want to regain their investments in an as short as possible time to be able to keep on putting out books. If the publishers in their current form have a future is a different question, but I think they have some added value in the process of creating books I want to read.
I accept those good points Seli. I cannot help but wonder however if there really is this demand for the whole catalogue.
Even if there were, and you may be right, it would still appear to me that these publishers are keeping their head in the sand looking for immediate coverage of such an investment when they should know full well that ebooks are not a whim or a fancy. They are the future.
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Old 06-20-2010, 12:38 PM   #297
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One issue I have with eBooks is in terms on ongoing series. It seems they put out the new eBooks and yet don't put out the older ones and if they do and did, they'll be in a different format that you have to strip the DRM to be able to convert to use.
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