Slashdot Mirror

The per-unit cost of printing a book and shipping it in bulk to a distributer is a trivial portion of the price of a book.

I found one breakdown of printed book cost analysis analysis that put printing and distribution at 20% of a book's cover price, and retailer's markup at 40%. A lot of that retailer's markup is inventory cost--what it costs the retailer to store and display copies of the book. Even though the actual *printing* cost is only 10% of the book's price, you then have to pay for dealing with the physical form and getting it to the customer, which is much tougher than getting a computer file to the customer. At a guess, I'd say that 30% to 40% of the cost of a physical book is tied to paying for its physical aspects. Not so trivial.

From the BBC article:
"The perception is that publishers are saving a fortune because they are not physically printing a book," he said. Actually, said Mr Evans, printing costs were a small fraction of the total outlay required to produce a book.

"All the costs are the people in the publisher's HQ and the writer's mortgage," he said, adding that these had not changed significantly with the rise of ebooks."

========
The PROBLEM with Mr. Evans' assertion is this:

Most of the other costs are one-time. Printing and distribution, though, go on and on, as long as the book is in print. But with ebooks, that cost is essentially ZERO. And distribution, as can be seen below, is NOT insignificant.

For example, there is this article:

http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-of-physical-book-publishing/

From the article:

"A Simple Model of Book Costs and an Example

The very simple break-up is -

                Author - Creation. 8-15% Royalties.
                Publisher - Being the Curator, Polishing, Manufacturing, Marketing. 45-55% (includes Author's Royalties). Note that Printing accounts for just 10% of the book price.
                Distributor - 10%.
                Retailers - 40%.
                Consumers. Just the paying part ;)

An example found at BookFinder states a cost break-up that closely matched what my research turned up -

                Book Retail Price: $27.95.
                Retailer (discount, staffing, rent, etc.) - $12.58. That's 45%.
                Author Royalties - $4.19. Exactly 15%.
                Wholesaler - $2.80. Exactly 10%.
                Pre-production (Publisher) - $3.55. That's 12.7%.
                Printing (Publisher) - $2.83. Translates to 10.125%.
                Marketing (Publisher) - $2. That's approximately 7.15%."

========
So, here's my take:

The wholesaler and retailer are handling REAL, PHYSICAL BOOKS and moving them around. That cost gets dropped.

And the cost of PRINTING the book goes away, too. That's another 10% or so.

That's 65%!

So an ebook should be about 35% the list cost of a hardback.

That's for popular fiction, essentially. Other markets have other margins. But eBooks are FOCUSED on popular fiction right now--the other markets are speculative niches so far.

Geez. What are they thinking, other than, "Let's abuse the public and steal their money!"?

There have been multiple studies that show the majority of the cost is not the printing of the actual book but on editing, and advertisement. The printing is an average of about 10% of the cost. Take a look at http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-of-physical-book-publishing/ .

You can get books in brail.

---
http://ireaderreview.com/2009/02/22/kindle-2-faq-for-blind-low-vision-people/

I have low vision. I have a new Kindle 2. The Kindle 2 will not be usable for all people with low vision.

It is not high contrast. The display is grey on lighter grey.

The largest font size is not all that large.

St the next-to-largest font size I get four to five words per line.

Text-to-speech is very good but not al all like an audiobook. The speed is somewhat variable.

I need a magnifier to even find the keys on the keyboard.

That said, I can read longer and without the pain I get when using a computer or trying to read even a large print book.

I highly recommend that anyone with low vision considering a Kindle 2 make an effort to try one first. This is not going to work if you rely on reverse print color or other high contrast.

Not all books will be accessible via the text-to-speech,and there is no speech for menus or for buying books.
----
I think the big one here is that not all books are accessable on the kindle.

BTW, native PDF support was released for the Kindle on 11/24.

http://ireaderreview.com/2008/01/18/how-to-view-pdf-files-on-the-kindle/

The summary mentioned Google will be going up against Kindle owners but didn't mention the Kindle app for iPhone.

As of August 31 2009 the Kindle app for the iPhone was the 4th most popular app in the App Store, with estimates of 3 million Kindle for iPhone users out there.

Google will be going against this as well as Stanza and the B&N ebook readers. Apparently there's a rather large market for ebooks on the iPhone/iPod touch.

Yes I can:

http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-of-physical-book-publishing

May I quote for you:

"For larger print runs, the cost of printing a book comes to just 10% of a bookâ(TM)s price. So the perception that ebooks should be a lot cheaper than physical books because thereâ(TM)s no printing or binding is inaccurate."

Martin