by Nathan Bransford, CNET news.com
There’s a perception among consumers that an e-book should cost very little or next to nothing because there is no paper, printing, and shipping involved. But in fact, for a new best-selling hardcover, all of the costs associated with print, from the printing to the shipping to the distribution to the warehousing to returns, amount to a mere few dollars per copy, depending on the size of the print run. The vast majority of a publisher’s costs come from expenses that still exist in an e-book world: Author advances, design, marketing, publicity, office space, and staff. You can therefore imagine the fear that e-book prices instill in publishing executives’ hearts. They’re only saving a few dollars per copy in the switch to the e-book world, but the prices of books were slashed more than half: from $24.99 to $9.99 and even lower. That begins to explain why publishers are trying to keep e-book prices high. But it doesn’t tell the whole story.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57412587-93/why-e-books-cost-so-much/?tag=mncol;topStories
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