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Do you know what happens to the money that would be spent on printing when an ebook is sold? For example, if someone buys your $15 ebook, do you get more money than if someone buys your $15 dead-tree book, or does that money go to your publisher or someone else?

If authors get more money for ebooks that would be an argument for buying ebooks despite their drawbacks.

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Do you know what happens to the money that would be spent on printing when an ebook is sold?

The cost of printing is a very small component of the cover price of a book; for paperbacks you're talking around $0.5, and for hardbacks around $2-3.

The author and publisher get roughly equal shares of the profit from a traditional trade book sale; the lion's share of the profit goes to the retail distribution chain, i.e. Amazon. (And when I say "lion's share" I mean 30-70%, depending.)

The author's cut is a royalty percentage of net receipts. And yes, I get a much larger percentage cut of ebook sales than paper sales -- it comes from what would otherwise be the physical dead-tree printing costs.

Good to know, thanks. It's not a huge amount, but it looks like if you do fairly well on ebook vs. hardcover, and sell a decent number of books, it'll be a nice little bonus.

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