20 ms·
> This was the whole "Why aren't ebooks a lot cheaper?" theme. A lot of people assumed that most of the cost was in printing, shipping, and selling physical boo
by oldsecondhand 5y ago
> This was the whole "Why aren't ebooks a lot cheaper?" theme. A lot of people assumed that most of the cost was in printing, shipping, and selling physical books whereas that was actually a pretty small slice of where the purchase price went.
Traditionally authors got around 10% (or less) of the retail price of a book. Same for music. But they also got an advance, which complicates things. But still the bulk of the price was in distribution.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> But still the bulk of the price was in distribution. As I understand (largely from contact a while ago from insiders in the TTRPG industry), for print runs of the sizes many non-mass-market books get (which is still going to effect ebooks of similar market sizes the same way) fixed costs like editing, layout, etc. take a lot (layout especially in things that aren't just plain text.)
- ghaff 5y agoAs I recall, printing for a typical hardcover was about $2 per copy to which you can add some for warehousing, shipping, returns, etc. (A qty 1 softcover print on demand book is <$5 shipped.) But leaving aside distributor cuts (which in the case of Amazon applies to both physical and digital books), most of the cost is in everything a publisher does and its cost structure.