4 ms·
Nope. The cost of producing an ebook is around 90% of the cost of producing a paper book. This only seems counter-intuitive until you realize that 70% of what
by cstross 16y ago
Nope.
The cost of producing an ebook is around 90% of the cost of producing a paper book. This only seems counter-intuitive until you realize that 70% of what you pay for a book is slurped down by the retail distribution channel, 10% goes to the author, 10% goes to the publisher, and 10% goes on production costs.
More here:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/02/cmap-2-how-books-are-made.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/02/cmap-2-h...
- joubert 16y agoNot that I'm disagreeing with you, but a retail distribution channel is necessary for physical goods (the 70% component you mention), unlike electronic products, which can be distributed at close to zero.
- protomyth 16y agoThe web does have costs and they are not "close to zero". People cost money either in salary or contracting.
- joubert 16y agoMaybe were not talking about the same aspects of book distribution, but I would estimate physical distribution (inventory keeping, shipping) to cost much more than electronic distribution (uoloading to an ebook store).
- protomyth 16y agoI'm not saying it is the same cost, I just have this problem with the people continually saying zero or almost zero cost. It isn't. There are different sets of costs (storage, bandwidth, server, etc.), but it still costs.
- qq66 16y agoIt's more instructive to think of the Web distribution channel as having close to zero MARGINAL costs. If you have an Amazon-scale infrastructure, and you increase your physical book shipments by 10%, you need to cut down 10% more trees, hire close to 10% more guys in the warehouse, pay 10% more to UPS, etc. For e-books, increasing shipments 10% increases the costs of the salary, infrastructure, etc. probably less than 0.1%.
- cstross 16y agoThe publishers' dilemma is that they can't sell direct to the public without screwing the existing retailers and distributors, who can be expected to retalliate (see also: Amazon blacklisting Macmillan). As ebook revenues are currently around 1% of all publishing revenues, this would be Extremely Unwise (in business terms) to the publishers. As ebooks become more important, expect to see a lot of friction between publishers and the current dead-tree retail supply chain, not to mention their attempts to stay relevant (B&N's Nook, Amazon's Kindle). But it's not really going to get serious for another couple of years.
- jm4 16y agoClose to zero? Tell that to the people that paid to build and maintain the infrastructure necessary to distribute all those Kindle books. A team of people to maintain an online storefront, the manpower required to scan all those books, servers, bandwidth, a wireless deal to distribute those books, etc... It could be less than shipping dead trees all over the place, but it's nowhere near zero.