It's hard to evaluate the cost of a ebook vs physical book without knowing the cut that the author and publisher get of the sales price.
An ebook has zero cost of distribution and no middlemen.
A physical book has to be typeset, printed, shipped to stores, shipped to customers, marketed in store, etc etc etc.
If a physical book is sold for $10 at least half that is printing, distribution and retail.
Like the GP, the price fixing of ebooks at the Dane price as physical books mothers me as well, particularly because physical books can be sold, lent or given away.
The exact same thing happened when CDs launched. They were cheaper to produce than vinyl or cassette very quickly but they sold at a premium for no reason at all.
The costs of printing and retail are definitely less than half the sales price: https://www.davidderrico.com/cost-breakdowns-e-books-vs-prin... Publishers say it's 10%; Derrico thinks they are underestimating certain logistical costs but no way it's 50%.
Scroll down to where the cost breakdown of a paperback is. More than $5 once you include distribution and retailing.
Or, as some might say, more than 50% of $10.
https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/e-book-conspiracy-apples...
100% incorrect.
ebooks still:
- Have to be edited, proof read and formatted properly.
- Have to have a cover design.
- Unless you're distributing on your own website (which is uber rare), you still need to pay for platform fees and retailer costs for distribution.
- Marketing and tech support which is the same for any book, regardless of what platform its sold on.
And book themselves are 500k-5MB in size typically, which is a single HTTP request, basically. Actual costs of storage and distribution are basically zero (per unit). And sure 10M books is more traffic than 10k books but we're talking $0.10/GB or less in baseline traffic. This is like Cloudfare free tier levels of traffic. And while the traffic costs do scale, it's completely dwarfed by the amortization of fixed costs like editing, formatting and cover design.
As for tech support, it's not the same. Publishers have to handle returns from retailers. Ebooks don't. It's no more complicated than revoking a key and the actual process of requesting a refund requires no human intervention either.
This really feels like I made some blanket statement than offended your sensibilities so you decided to argue without knowing why, if I'm being honest.
Because you said this:
"An ebook has zero cost of distribution and no middlemen."
and then said this:
"These are all fixed costs not per-unit costs."
Which are two different arguments.
This really feels like you made two different arguments, then I offended your sensibilities by pointing it out, so you decided to argue without knowing why, if I'm being honest.
But as anyone who has taken Econ 101 knows, the price is based on what people are willing to pay for it. The cost of production merely dictates whether it is viable to sell in the market.
If most people are willing to pay $10 for an ebook, when the hardcopy is also $10, then $10 is what they'll sell it for.
When I purchase a book, I decide how much I'll pay based on what the book will do for me. I'll get the same entertainment/info whether it is printed or electronic. For some types of books I prefer printed, so I won't pay much for the ebook. For fiction, I prefer electronic (already have too many physical books in the house), so I'll happily pay for it.
Of course, smart people just use libraries :-)