3 ms·

I don't understand how ebooks can cost more than a mass production paper book. If you are familiar with the industry of producing paper and ebooks for books tha

by varikin 14y ago

I don't understand how ebooks can cost more than a mass production paper book. If you are familiar with the industry of producing paper and ebooks for books that are best sellers then I would really love hear about the cost difference in producing both.

talaketu 14y ago
I have no idea about this.. but I can speculate that maintaining the DRM system indefinitely after the initial sale represents an ongoing cost whose net present value needs to be considered in contrast with a DRM-free book.
- tjoff 14y ago
  The DRM system is completely decentralized and doesn't cost anything to uphold.
  - j_s 14y ago
    Hello! I am unfamiliar with the details of the Kindle DRM implementation. Would you mind explaining at least the degree to which you are familiar with it, if not providing some background and/or links so that I can verify this statement for myself instead of just taking your word for it? Thanks!
    - tjoff 14y ago
      (I haven't borrowed any e-books from amazon so maybe they have a different scheme for those) It has to be decentralized because you don't have to connect your kindle to amazon at any point in order to purchase and read a book. You can choose to download the book manually from amazon when purchasing and move the file directly to the kindle over USB and be done. The book is encrypted with your device serial number (or something similar), which is also why, if you would want to strip the DRM from the file (which might be illegal, depending on where you live), you have to supply your kindle serial number to be able to decrypt it.
chipotle_coyote 14y ago
I am, at least to some degree. My back-of-the-envelope calculations a while ago suggested that ebooks are cheaper to produce than paper books, just by not as much as people probably imagine. (My figure then was 25% less, although I confess I don't remember how I came up with that now. It may have been a cocktail napkin.) There are certain fixed costs which remain the same no matter the format: you have to (or at least should!) pay the authors, editors, proofreaders, artists, and cover designers the same amount no matter the form because they're doing pretty much the same work. And while ebooks don't have typesetting/layout processes identical to physical books, they still have them. And if you don't want the ebooks to look like ass -- something that a lot of big publishers clearly don't care about yet, unfortunately -- it's not going to take all that much less time, particularly if you have to prepare them in multiple formats; you have to do a "final proof," ideally on the actual devices you're targeting. In practice, all of the costs above are generally much more of the production cost than the actual printing is. The biggest savings you have with an ebook isn't from not paying the printer, it's from not paying the distributor. But there's still a catch there: while you're not giving 50% or more of the cover price to the distributor the way you would if you were trying to get the book into Barnes & Noble or what have you, you're still giving 30% or more of the cover price to the retailer. (And you have to pay attention to the "or more"; you may be paying a middleman like Lulu to get you into some of the online stores, or you may be paying Amazon's bogus "download charges" in addition to their stated 30% cut. Assuming your sale qualifies for their 30% cut bracket, rather than one of the higher ones.)
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  25% sounds a little high to me. The figure I normally hear is that paper is about 10-15% of the cost of a book (I'm not directly in the publishing industry, but I've been a technical reviewer on several books and have a fair number of friends who are author/editors - mostly in the non-fiction market which is a little different from the fiction world). See http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-costs.html http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-cost... for some vague evidence (The slice taken by marketing in the above seems high from what others have told me. Its also a somewhat simplistic breakdown since it ignores some of the long-term costs from publishers that aren't related to "books" directly. e.g. the advances to authors who never get published, etc. - so the potential publisher profits aren't quite as large as they appear here - there's other overhead outside the printing/distributing/selling books bit) Also see http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-of-physical-book-publishing/ http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-... It's also something Charlie Stross has posted about a fair bit see this collection of posts http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-misconceptions-about-pu-1.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-m... TL;DR - people think about book prices being related to cost of producing media. That's like thinking software costs are mostly about the price of printing DVDs or shifting bits. It's mostly about book development costs - not media costs.
johnrgrace 14y ago
Well if you ask the publishing a few people they cost more to make, and most say the costs are almost the same. seriously I kid you not. This of course is why they need new accounting departments and financial analysts and are highly prone to being broken apart like crab legs at a vegas buffet.

by varikin 14y ago

talaketu 14y ago

I have no idea about this.. but I can speculate that maintaining the DRM system indefinitely after the initial sale represents an ongoing cost whose net present value needs to be considered in contrast with a DRM-free book.

tjoff 14y ago
The DRM system is completely decentralized and doesn't cost anything to uphold.
- j_s 14y ago
  Hello! I am unfamiliar with the details of the Kindle DRM implementation. Would you mind explaining at least the degree to which you are familiar with it, if not providing some background and/or links so that I can verify this statement for myself instead of just taking your word for it? Thanks!
  - tjoff 14y ago
    (I haven't borrowed any e-books from amazon so maybe they have a different scheme for those) It has to be decentralized because you don't have to connect your kindle to amazon at any point in order to purchase and read a book. You can choose to download the book manually from amazon when purchasing and move the file directly to the kindle over USB and be done. The book is encrypted with your device serial number (or something similar), which is also why, if you would want to strip the DRM from the file (which might be illegal, depending on where you live), you have to supply your kindle serial number to be able to decrypt it.

chipotle_coyote 14y ago

I am, at least to some degree. My back-of-the-envelope calculations a while ago suggested that ebooks are cheaper to produce than paper books, just by not as much as people probably imagine. (My figure then was 25% less, although I confess I don't remember how I came up with that now. It may have been a cocktail napkin.) There are certain fixed costs which remain the same no matter the format: you have to (or at least should!) pay the authors, editors, proofreaders, artists, and cover designers the same amount no matter the form because they're doing pretty much the same work. And while ebooks don't have typesetting/layout processes identical to physical books, they still have them. And if you don't want the ebooks to look like ass -- something that a lot of big publishers clearly don't care about yet, unfortunately -- it's not going to take all that much less time, particularly if you have to prepare them in multiple formats; you have to do a "final proof," ideally on the actual devices you're targeting. In practice, all of the costs above are generally much more of the production cost than the actual printing is. The biggest savings you have with an ebook isn't from not paying the printer, it's from not paying the distributor. But there's still a catch there: while you're not giving 50% or more of the cover price to the distributor the way you would if you were trying to get the book into Barnes & Noble or what have you, you're still giving 30% or more of the cover price to the retailer. (And you have to pay attention to the "or more"; you may be paying a middleman like Lulu to get you into some of the online stores, or you may be paying Amazon's bogus "download charges" in addition to their stated 30% cut. Assuming your sale qualifies for their 30% cut bracket, rather than one of the higher ones.)

adrianhoward 14y ago
25% sounds a little high to me. The figure I normally hear is that paper is about 10-15% of the cost of a book (I'm not directly in the publishing industry, but I've been a technical reviewer on several books and have a fair number of friends who are author/editors - mostly in the non-fiction market which is a little different from the fiction world). See http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-costs.html http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-cost... for some vague evidence (The slice taken by marketing in the above seems high from what others have told me. Its also a somewhat simplistic breakdown since it ignores some of the long-term costs from publishers that aren't related to "books" directly. e.g. the advances to authors who never get published, etc. - so the potential publisher profits aren't quite as large as they appear here - there's other overhead outside the printing/distributing/selling books bit) Also see http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-of-physical-book-publishing/ http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-... It's also something Charlie Stross has posted about a fair bit see this collection of posts http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-misconceptions-about-pu-1.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-m... TL;DR - people think about book prices being related to cost of producing media. That's like thinking software costs are mostly about the price of printing DVDs or shifting bits. It's mostly about book development costs - not media costs.

johnrgrace 14y ago

Well if you ask the publishing a few people they cost more to make, and most say the costs are almost the same. seriously I kid you not. This of course is why they need new accounting departments and financial analysts and are highly prone to being broken apart like crab legs at a vegas buffet.