Medievalist, I've read some descriptions by publishers about their costs, and how ebook-only doesn't cost as much. I honestly...don't get it.
I'll read over those links later to see if there's some new insights.I mean, using your "couple of bucks" estimate, you're looking at $10k for even a small print run of 5k books, right? Does that include shipping, warehousing, returns? I'll assume it does, for a sec. Then there's the expenses of marketing the books to the chain bookstores, which I have been told is significant - one of the larger expenses?
But most small epublishers are producing books for well under $10k.
Editor's mean salary is $53k in the US. Say you pay well above that, $80k, and keep in mind that an employee costs a business about 150% of the actual salary (the rest is other expenses), you're looking at an editor costing the publisher about $60 an hour assuming they only work 40 hours a week (which most editors I have talked to would laugh about). If a book gets 100 hours of editing, that's six grand. I know several digital artists who sell covers to NYC publishers - they get $500-2000 a cover. So maybe we're up to $7k now. Add in "other expenses of business" like your accountant, small business office, hardware, other staff, etc., amortized over all your books produced and you're still probably under $10k a book.
So yeah, I don't get it. I *am* interested, though, in where my reasoning is wrong. I've run a few businesses before, but never worked at a large publisher, so I'm just not seeing where the extra ebook production expenses are for them. Small epublishers seem able to produce similar quality ebooks at much less expense.
I know some of you folks actually work at larger publishers - I'd really appreciate hearing where my math is wrong.
