The real cost of books

[mdlbear]

So... here's an article on Gizmodo about How Much It Actually Costs to Publish an Ebook vs. a Real Book, based on Making the Case for iPad E-Book Prices at the New York Times.

Giz puts it all in a handy table -- I'll wait while you go and look -- that makes $13 for an ebook look like a fair deal compared to $26 for a hardcover. The publisher gets about the same amount in both cases. The bookseller -- Amazon, say -- gets $3.90 for the ebook, vs. $13 for the hardcover, which is fair because there's no inventory, floor space, or need to cover inventory that doesn't sell. The author gets a little less for the ebook: $3.25 vs $3.90. Printing, storage, and distribution for the hardback is only $3.25. Seems fair, right?

Not so fast.

Giz also says "There is no equivalent paperback market with lower costs to eke out more money later in a book's life (especially if the hardcover flops)." But isn't the ebook more like a paperback? The marginal cost of one more ebook is zero.

If you take out both the bookseller's and the publisher's cut from the ebook, you're down to a perfectly reasonable $4.53. That still includes $1.28 per copy for copyediting, design, and marketing. That means that an author who sells ebooks directly to the public can make money at a lower price.

And that, my children, is why crowdfunding works.

(I'm oversimplifying, of course. Unless you're already an established author or famous for some other reason, it's almost impossible to get your sales figures up to what a publisher could get for you. And so on. But the publishing industry still has to worry.)

Cross-posted to mdlbear and crowdfunding.

Comments

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>>Unless you're already an established author or famous for some other reason, it's almost impossible to get your sales figures up to what a publisher could get for you.<<

Right now that is true, because publishers have an established distribution and sorting system. It's easy for shoppers to find what they want in a bookstore or a publisher's catalog.

That doesn't have to remain true, and probably will not, and certainly not if I can help it! This is why we need a crowdfunding hub site, so that people can go to it and say, "Hmm, I want to read a fantasy today," and click the tab and find fantasy web serials and fantasy ebooks and so forth that are crowdfunded. And then they can read free ones that are funded by donations, or they can chip in a few bucks for a subscription or ebook, etc.

The main advantages that publishing has are respectability, distribution, and ease of printing mass paper runs. None of those have to be permanent.

Re: Well...

[mdlbear]

Yup. That's why the publishing industry has to worry -- the writing is on the wall for them. And our writing is on the web.

We're in for an interesting couple of years, during which "traditional" publishers, music labels, and the like will become increasingly irrelevant.