Destiny omnibus

[Christopher]

Don't publishers profit more from ebooks as there are no printing costs?

To the extent that that's true, its impact is exaggerated in popular belief. The cost of physically printing and shipping a book is a fairly small percentage of the total cost of creating and publishing it. A book still needs to be written, edited, copyedited, designed, typeset, and proofread; it needs to have its cover designed and illustrated and its cover blurb written; it needs to be marketed and promoted; and if it's an original novel, it needs to be bound and sent out to advance readers in manuscript stage to gather quotes which can be used to promote it. And all the people who do those tasks have to be paid for their work. It's only when you get to the final publication stage that any difference between print and e-books comes into play.

 

[ATimson]

Don't publishers profit more from ebooks as there are no printing costs?

To the extent that that's true, its impact is exaggerated in popular belief.

It's only when you get to the final publication stage that any difference between print and e-books comes into play.

While the lack of printing, warehousing, shipping, and returns costs may not be significant, ebooks are noticeably more profitable. Vendors only take a 30% cut of ebook sales, versus about 50% on print book sales - which means that for each ebook sold at the same price as print (read: all mass-market titles) S&S makes about 40% more money.

 

[Sho]

I still wonder why an ebook version wouldn't be cost-effective. I assume that by this point a publisher of this scale has a digital process down pat, i.e. no matter whether a book ends up being printed, it's derived from a digital intermediary. Deriving the ebook versions presumably shouldn't take a skilled worker more than one or two work shifts (an I think generous estimate that should cover making 4-5 different format versions and running both standardized and internal test suites against it, e.g. IDPFs official epub test suite), so the manufacturing cost should be negligible.

It's conceivable that digital bookstores like Amazon and iTunes require a placement fee when uploading a book, so that you need to sell at least a certain amount of copies to break even on that end as well, but I'd expect the Destiny omnibus to do well enough.

Are there any other implicit costs that make releasing additional versions of a book less attractive? Do authors get a flat fee per release in addition to per-copy royalities, for instance?

I know too little about how the literature business works, I guess.

 

[Christopher]

Are there any other implicit costs that make releasing additional versions of a book less attractive? Do authors get a flat fee per release in addition to per-copy royalities, for instance?

Nope, just the royalties.

 

[Patrick O'Brien]

Do the authors profit more from an ebook as opposed to a traditional paperback?

 

[David Mack]

^ Not really, no. All the revenue from all forms of each title are aggregated for the purpose of calculating royalties. (Once upon a time the eBook revenues were calculated separately, but not anymore for titles published in print and eBook simultaneously. Older titles that were eBooks first have separated royalties for subsequent republication in print.)

 

[Patrick O'Brien]

That is too bad. I was under the impression eBooks were better for the author. Thanks for the reply David. Nice to see you in these forums by the way. I am a big fan of your work

 

[Therin of Andor]

I was under the impression eBooks were better for the author.

Hardcovers are supposedly "better" for the author. The royalty is slightly higher, and a science fiction book publisher shows faith in an author by publishing the work in this more expensive, more prestigious format. Then comes, I presume, trade-sized paperbacks, which have tended to take the place of hardcovers in the changing economy. Both of these formats may then go to MMPB reprint, so the author can often have several bites at the same cherry.

 

[Patrick O'Brien]

Thanks for the info Therin I never knew that about Hard cover books. They look good on the shelf, but I prefer to read paper backs on on my kindle now Much easier to carry around on the Train. I guess ebook royalties are more inline with MMPB's?