My wife is going nuts (ebook pricing)

Cliffhanger said:

All I have is your word of her credentials. This is an internet forum. She could be the former head of every publishing company ever.

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So... why are you posting on a board owned and run by someone you don't trust?

Cliffhanger said:

All I have is your word of her credentials. This is an internet forum.

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Actually, since you obviously know what a sigline is--you have one of your own--you have her word for it, too. Just click. Google her name. It's pretty simple.

It's not a question of resumes, but math. She's citing sources that don't actually support her position and ignoring the basic math.

I think it would help both sides if we quoted from the sources a little more.

I have a question. In the comments of the Digital Book World article someone writes:

What’s not being said is how publishers think in terms of “print first,” which raises the cost of e-book production (because you have to convert from a page layout format to a page-flow format). If they thought in terms of “e-book first,” the cost would go WAAAAAAAAAAAY down. The path from Microsoft Word to Adobe InDesign to ePub is circuitous, because you convert from text-flow to page-layout back to text-flow. The path from Microsoft Word to ePub is more of a straight line.

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Is this true? Is the path of book production manuscript-->print book-->ebook?




Here are some quotes from the Nathan Bransford CNET article:

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.

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And even aside from financial considerations, publishers' entire reason for existence is bound up in print. The major publishers are, quite simply, the best companies in the world at getting print books from authors to readers. Most of the tools at their disposal for making a book a hit are tied to a print world, from buying front-of-the-bookstore placement (yes, publishers pay for that) to book tours.
As the exponential growth of e-books has slowed, some publishers are even whispering their hopes that perhaps the rate of e-book adoption will slow further and print will be viable well into the future.

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Emphasis mine. Doesn't this imply that at least part of the cost of an ebook is still tied to supporting a print infrastructure?

superluminal said:

Is this true? Is the path of book production manuscript-->print book-->ebook?

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Well, not exactly. It can be, especially for older releases, which can be a nightmare because of problems with old files and OCR.

But on a new books, a book with something like date-and-day release, the printing and ebook production happen in tandem, more or less.

I mentioned the file fork: it's a fork in the workflow at the point where you have proofed galleys, when the book is finalized in terms of all the text, including the frontmatter and the index, and captions as well as the body text, the book exists in something like InDesign, or Quark Express or even Framemaker.

That file is "forked"--it goes to the right to the printer(s) and to the left, to the ebook production team.

It's the right point in the process because the book is "finished." That is, the contents are final.

Depending on the house and the team, they will likely run some in-house scripts to add or modify some of the data, then run other scripts/use humans to export it for the rough flow into various ebook formats.

In some cases, you flow the text into a pre-built shell. In others you gack the formated text out of specific areas in the layout and build the file.

Then each file (likely .pdf, .ePUB and .amz) is processed separately; front and back matter is added, stylesheets for things like absence/presence of headers, chapter openers, parts/sections, captions, are applied, internal links for the TOC are finalized (in some cases the TOC xml file is hand-generated, in others it's built by a script), the specific frontmatter/back matter for each ebook version is added, special features (i.e. linked indices, etc.) are added; cover and internal art are finalized.

Then each file is checked visually by a living human for problems/errors, and goes to QA for check on the various devices.

After it passes QA and validation, it goes to be uploaded, where it typically has to be validated against each retailer's spec (all ePubs are not the same; there's Nook ePub, Adobe ePUB, Apple ePub . . . ).

The DRM is applied, unfortunately, at different points depending on the file format and the local workflow; in some cases, using proprietary tools, in some cases as part of the final upload and a check box.

Then you wait to see if the retailer will reject the file. Sometimes they do, for odd reasons.

Then you check to make sure the retailer or a glitch hasn't associated weird metadata or something in the description and catalog database.

superluminal said:

Doesn't this imply that at least part of the cost of an ebook is still tied to supporting a print infrastructure?

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Pre-fork costs like acquisition/advance, licensing, editing, copyediting, proofing, indexing . . . those are shared costs.

There's good reason to consider marketing costs as shared as well.

To a publisher releasing print and ebook formats, the costs up to the point of the fork are part of the cost of the book. They really are. It's the same book, just in a different container. The author is paid for each container in a combination of advance and (potential) royalties, typically. For some publishers, there's no advance, and a higher royalty; that depends on the contract.

Ebook rights, hardcover rights, paperback rights, audio rights, foreign rights, those are all the book in different containers. The author has to be paid for them.

But absolutely publishers are looking at the need to keep making printed books, to sell to libraries, to sell in bookstores, on or offline.

GregB said:

Problem, I'm not even sure how it's possible since the cost differential is only 10%.

Prices have been all over the place since the DoJ hammer came down. And of course that 50% ebook discount doesn't translate to other formats than hardcover.

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Yeah, 11-22-63 costs $35.00 in a bookstore, so the ebook is vastly cheaper. And yes, I was speaking of hardcover and since every hardcover I looked at was in a range of about 40 - 50% more expensive than the ebook version, I'm thinking the outrage over ebook prices might be just a little overstated.

Yes, Amazon deeply discounts hardbacks, and that's a matter of some contention, so the differences look less impressive on the Amazon website, but I think it's pretty clear that ebooks are being sold at substantial discounts over the hardcover prices.

Medievalist said:

The book is not the container; the book is the contents.

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No, the story is the contests. The book is the whole package.

If it was just the contents, then I wouldn't have several different Shakespeare on my shelf, all packaged differently. I wouldn't have a whole shelf of Robert E. Howard, many have the same contests, the same stories, but the packaging is different.

For me, if it was just content, I could see going with eBooks, but I collect the whole package. I like having them on display. And I like paging through them.

Medievalist said:

Well, not exactly. It can be, especially for older releases, which can be a nightmare because of problems with old files and OCR.

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Oh, I've seen lots of complaints about badly converted old books, so I heartily disagree with anyone who says it's easy to convert old print to ebooks. It is sooo more than a "push of a button."

Medievalist said:

I mentioned the file fork: it's a fork in the workflow at the point where you have proofed galleys, when the book is finalized in terms of all the text, including the frontmatter and the index, and captions as well as the body text, the book exists in something like InDesign, or Quark Express or even Framemaker.

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I'm not sure I chose the right wording for my question. If I didn't, I apologize. I should have asked "is the path 'text-flow to page-layout back to text-flow'?" I'm genuinely asking because I really don't know.

Shadow_Ferret said:

No, the story is the contests. The book is the whole package.

If it was just the contents, then I wouldn't have several different Shakespeare on my shelf, all packaged differently. I wouldn't have a whole shelf of Robert E. Howard, many have the same contests, the same stories, but the packaging is different.

For me, if it was just content, I could see going with eBooks, but I collect the whole package. I like having them on display. And I like paging through them.

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But you bought them for the Shakespeare, right? Not because you wanted some cardboard and paper. You wanted the contents. The other is just packaging of the contents.

Shadow_Ferret said:

No, the story is the contests. The book is the whole package.

If it was just the contents, then I wouldn't have several different Shakespeare on my shelf, all packaged differently.

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Dude, the contents of those books isn't the same.

Two editions of the same play aren't the same. The contents are different.

The editor and edition make so much difference that I can refer to first folio vs. Johnson, vs, Coleridge, vs. Rouse vs. Braunmuller vs. Taylor with respect to editions of Macbeth, and other Shakepeare lovers will know exactly what books I'm referring to because the contents are all different.

superluminal said:

I'm not sure I chose the right wording for my question. If I didn't, I apologize. I should have asked "is the path 'text-flow to page-layout back to text-flow'?" I'm genuinely asking because I really don't know.

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It's more like one of those charts where you have multiple paths depending on the answers to questions.

Because of the nature of print--that is, you can't correct things after the galley stage, in practical terms--the text is finalized for print before the ebook is made.

You can't just rely on the text being edited before the galley stage because typesetters are human, errors may be introduced and it's not uncommon for earlier errors to be missed. That's why there's a galley stage (and there's a similar stage in the ebook production too). Errors can be things like bad breaks, or kerning problems, or ordinary typos, or italic overruns, for instance. Most of those are things that will affect or could effect the ebook too.

So it makes sense to have the fork when the file is sent to be printed.

Also, in rough terms, the time between sending the file to the printer(s) and the time the book is ready to ship is a great time to produce the ebook, which involves a much smaller team (possibly a single production worker with an admin/manager) or it may be shipped to a conversion company.

But the ebook file has benefitted from acquisition, editing, proofing, and even typesetting and design applied to the printed book.

Cliffhanger said:

Look over the numbers I provided in the other thread. None of those were ever refuted, because they're accurate. Going digital you don't have the cost of physical printing, you have less of a distribution cut taken out (30% from the highest digital distro, Apple; 65% from most print distros), you have no shipping & warehousing costs, and you have no taxes on stock. Yet, ebooks "cost" nearly the same as print books, and people still in the industry will say it's anything except what it is, grabbing for more profit. Again, I think the industry needs to earn more. They more than deserve it. But the math doesn't lie.

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Most of the other items have been addressed, but, as to the section I've bolded?

Speaking as the manager of a server farm that includes webservers, DNS servers, database servers, file servers and several other utility servers, both hardware and virtually based, the statement in bold is absolutely untrue. Whether the product is sitting in a box in a warehouse or a server in a rack, there is still storage and delivery costs. Might not be as much (and I would love to see a legitimate comparison), but it IS still there.

Williebee said:

Originally Posted by Cliffhanger


Look over the numbers I provided in the other thread. None of those were ever refuted, because they're accurate. Going digital you don't have the cost of physical printing, you have less of a distribution cut taken out (30% from the highest digital distro, Apple; 65% from most print distros), you have no shipping & warehousing costs, and you have no taxes on stock. Yet, ebooks "cost" nearly the same as print books, and people still in the industry will say it's anything except what it is, grabbing for more profit. Again, I think the industry needs to earn more. They more than deserve it. But the math doesn't lie.

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Most of the other items have been addressed, but, as to the section I've bolded?

Speaking as the manager of a server farm that includes webservers, DNS servers, database servers, file servers and several other utility servers, both hardware and virtually based, the statement in bold is absolutely untrue. Whether the product is sitting in a box in a warehouse or a server in a rack, there is still storage and delivery costs. Might not be as much (and I would love to see a legitimate comparison), but it IS still there.

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QFT. I'd get back into this conversation if I thought it would do any good, but I'm sure that the owner of an epublisher, who has worked in epublishing for years, wouldn't be considered a credible source. I can assure you, however, that every delivery of every ebook purchase results in a delivery charge from the retailer, and that every ebook does just exist in the ether to be produced like a magician's rabbit when someone wants to purchase one. At our publishing house, we've developed a database system that stores ebooks in every format, at every stage in the publication process. And the last time I checked--which was today, by the way--all that coding and IT work costs a fortune. In fact, earlier this week, we were looking into app creation and development based upon a model we've created. The initial developmental costs? Over $50k for the individual platform we were developing--and that price is cheap.

Oh--sorry. Forgot that my credentials aren't good enough to chip in to this conversation.

Williebee and mscelina, I hope you'll address a follow-up comment for me. No doubt there are overhead costs to maintain a digital store and to process purchases/downloads. Just as there are overhead costs for a retailer to maintain a print store and process transactions -- including technology infrastructure! The main difference, of course, is the vast difference in productivity between the digital and print retailer. Anyway, we don't need to break down those costs, because they aren't a separate line-item borne by the publisher; those costs are covered by the discount offered to the retailer. Obviously, much lower retail overhead (or higher productivity, depending on how you want to look at it) is a crucial reason the retailer will take a much smaller piece of the revenue for a digital book than it requires for a printed one.

Or...maybe we're not talking about retail overhead? Are we instead talking about the publisher's need to store a copy and backup(s) of digital files, and the bandwidth required to upload an ebook to a digital retailer? If so, are we then trying to compare those costs to the costs associated with shipping, warehousing, insuring, and paying taxes on printed inventory, along with processing returns and pulping/remaindering unsold inventory? What about the cost of maintaining the technology infrastructure to manage that inventory efficiently? Because these considerations would seem to underline the cost differential between print and digital.

Cliffhanger said:

I know the costs involved in printing books, and I know the costs involved in digital books. The claim that digital books are nearly as expensive as print is simply wrong.

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A publisher produces a book in multiple formats. If the publisher chooses to amortize the costs over all sales irrespective of format, the costs of digital and physical formats of the same book are the same.

Soccer Mom said:

But you bought them for the Shakespeare, right? Not because you wanted some cardboard and paper. You wanted the contents. The other is just packaging of the contents.

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Actually, in a sense, I did buy it for the cardboard and paper because, as I said, I can hold it, put it on display, and thumb through it. As a collector, digital versions just don't cut it.

Medievalist said:

Dude, the contents of those books isn't the same.

Two editions of the same play aren't the same. The contents are different.

The editor and edition make so much difference that I can refer to first folio vs. Johnson, vs, Coleridge, vs. Rouse vs. Braunmuller vs. Taylor with respect to editions of Macbeth, and other Shakepeare lovers will know exactly what books I'm referring to because the contents are all different.

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Just curious. Are all those versions available as eBooks? I know I've Googled an eBook version of The Globe Illustrated Shakespeare: The Complete Works Annotated, but can't find it. But I fully admit my Google-fu isn't very good.

Anyway, I apologize. I think we're going way off topic from pricing and into the realm of simply why I prefer physical books to digital.

Cliffhanger said:

It's not a question of resumes, but math. She's citing sources that don't actually support her position and ignoring the basic math.

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You're the one who brought up resumes/credentials.

Al Stevens said:

A publisher produces a book in multiple formats. If the publisher chooses to amortize the costs over all sales irrespective of format, the costs of digital and physical formats of the same book are the same.

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Which is an accounting trick, not a cost inherent in producing a digital book. Directly comparing digital to print in so far as the actual difference in cost involved in bringing a book to market in either format are possible, have been done, and show a wildly cheaper avenue in digital only production. The distro storing files is part of their cut, the pub storing files is a standard practice with print or digital, that storage is miraculously cheep shouldn't be ignored, that print ready files are huge compared to all the various digital formats is also being ignored.

Where publishers put out print and ebooks, if the print book didn't exist there would be no ebook.
For epublishers all costs must be spread over the ebooks.

In either situation, why shouldn't the ebooks bear their share of the fixed costs to produce the book in any form? What makes them so special that they get a free ride?

Every product that goes out the door should pay its share in the fixed costs. If each unit doesn't pay for its share the business dies.

As ebooks take a greater share of the market from print books, then ebooks have to carry a greater share of the fixed costs. That is the way business works.

Cliffhanger said:

Directly comparing digital to print in so far as the actual difference in cost involved in bringing a book to market in either format are possible, have been done, and show a wildly cheaper avenue in digital only production.

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Could you provide a link to that study? Or if not that, cite the sources and provide more details?

Stacia Kane said:

You're the one who brought up resumes/credentials.

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Hey Stacia, in fairness to Cliffhanger, it was Mac who brought up credentials and questioned whether his were sufficient to disagree with Medievalist.

P.S. LOVE that cover!

Stlight said:

Why shouldn't the ebooks bear their share of the fixed costs to produce the book in any form? What makes them so special that they get a free ride?

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Stlight's whole post, but especially this. By insisting that the production of ebooks is cheaper and that the cost to the consumer should be so much less than a print product, it sounds to me as if that position holds my work as an editor on that book - and everyone else who's worked on it, including the author - in lesser value because of the format in which it's distributed, despite the "fork" that Medievalist mentioned, which doesn't happen until late in the process.

I guess I just don't get why everything that happens before a book goes to market - the vast majority of which is the same regardless of distribution format - should be ascribed a different value depending on that format.

Stlight said:

Where publishers put out print and ebooks, if the print book didn't exist there would be no ebook.
For epublishers all costs must be spread over the ebooks. .

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Yes.

If a book is digital only it still:

1. Is acquired—and yes, advances may be paid on exclusively digital books; it depends on the book and the publisher. (Note that publishers still will pay an advance for a paperback trade and/or mass market edition of a previously published hard cover first ed).

2. Is edited.
3. Is proofed.
4. Is designed (typography, layout, dingbats/ornaments, etc.).
5. Has a cover at least; hence artwork and licensing.
6. Is produced; flowing, some value of typesetting depending on the book and the publisher; may have custom links in an index, may have rich media (links to publisher controlled Websites with updated content, music, video, special images, etc.).
7. Miscellaneous fees, depending on the book and the file—DRM licensing (i.e. Adobe), font licensing, other resource licensing; ISBN.
8. QA (Checking the book by hand/eye; running verifier scripts, checking features (i.e. cover display, TOC, links, basic functionality) on the actual devices)
9. Uploading/metadata/book description/
10. Marketing
11. Live archiving (assets kept and tracked, all files maintained and kept current)
12. Depending on the publisher, they may have internal transaction servers/software/staff
13. Fees (depending on the publisher) for a third-party retailer (Apple, Amazon, B & N, CreateSpace, eSellerate, etc.
14. Royalties--depending on the book, the publisher may have to track and pay royalties to the author, internal art licensess, other asset licensees (i.e. fonts, video, music, etc.)

When the two books are produced in tandem attributing all the costs to the print book for shared assets/services is just not logical.

At some publishers the P & L will track hardcover, softcover, and digital versions (based on ISBN).

In many ways, the digital book production is just another container—hardcover, trade paper, mass market paper, book club, tie-in, package cover (i.e. bundling books, casing them as a set, etc. ).

I think people are talking of many different things here, and it's not easy to compare.

Some are talking of companies that produce both ebooks and print books, and some are talking of companies that just produce ebooks.

It's also very hard to compare costs when we are trying to compare companies of vastly different sizes. I don't think anyone can disagree that the overhead costs of a big 6 company based in New York are huge compared to a smaller epub-only company outside of New York.


The only way to do an accurate comparison would be to get data from a small to midsize print-only company and compare it to an epub-only company of the same size.


Fascinating discussion though. I'm glad to see it staying so civil.

I'm talking about the differences between taking a single book to market either as a print format or as a digital format.

What's at question here are the unique costs associated with each format, not universal costs. You have to pay a cover designer and an editor irrelevant of the format, digital vs print, which makes it a universal cost. The only way to honestly compare them is contrasting the unique costs to each, or those aspects that are so different to each that they deserve mention, such as the different rate taken out for distribution.

Many costs are universal, only a few are truly unique to format. Keeping the lights on, IT people, computer network, FTP, editors, cover designers, marketers, computers, files storage, etc are all universal costs. You're going to pay for these things irrelevant to the form you book comes out in.

The unique costs are very few: physically printing, shipping & warehousing, taxes, distribution, and royalties.

Printing costs are a significant expense, that simply isn't incurred with digital. Depending on various factors, this can be as much as $5 per unit on a trade paperback with a 5000 unit offset print run. Again, no correlary in digital.

Shipping & warehousing costs fluctuate so are hard to nail down. There are none of these costs in digital. Yes, you need to store the digital files, but that is a universal expslense, you don't need to store files just because it's a digital book, an pub worth their salt is going to keep their prig ready files. Compare the files sizes (print ready) to the various digital formats and the printers files still take more space. But again, you're storing the files anyway so this isn't unique.

Taxes. You still pay taxes for various bits of doing business, but there are no taxes levied against digital stock on your serves, but there are on physical product in the warehouse.

Distribution. Typically the distribution channel takes 65% of retail and the pub only gets 35%. With digital it varies, but to make things easier let's use Apple which takes 30% of retail, leaving 70% for the pub.

Royalties. Print typically sees up to 10% of retail, while digital often sees 50% or retail.

In each way that is actually unique to digital books, they are at a huge advantage. The only way to honestly compare these is to acknowledge which bits are universal and which are unique, then compare them side by side.