Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

I wish the author had provided citations for his costs, because I know at least one of his number - book printing cost, is just plain wrong, which causes me to suspect the rest.

"The Printing process costs, on average, 10% ($4) of the cover price of a book, "

So, "Printing Process" is not a function of the cover price of the book. It is a function of what size of book, spine design, what type of binding, what type of covers, whether there is printing on the inside of the cover, whether there is color, what type of paper, and how many pages, and how many books you will be printing.

For example, sitting on my bed right now are two softcover books:

"Maps in a mirror, short fiction of Orson Scott Card", 671 pages, $23.95 list.

"Advanced Unix Programming, Second Edition", 717 pages, $64.99 list.

Both Black and White, perfect Binding, color cover, no printing on inside of covers.

http://www.instantpublisher.com/Price-quote.aspx sugests that the cost of each should be $4.72 - which is 19% of the Orson Scott Card, and 7.2% of Advanced Unix Printing.

In addition, this is what it would cost _me_ - I have to believe that large publishers are able to print their books for less that what I would pay.

So, the author's back-of-the-envelope calculation is 10%, yours is 13% (the average of 19% and 7.2%), and your conclusion is that "the author is just plain wrong"?

What would the author's rough estimates look like if they were "in excellent agreement" with yours? Would "11%" be close enough for you, or are you holding out for "12.8% to 13.3%"?

Can I suggest that you read the Wikipedia article on "orders of approximation"? Or, better yet, "Fermi problem"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_approximation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem

Of a few sources for the clearest figures, most appeared to be quoting from this, and not self-pub figures like the OP of this thread.

Here's the best written I could find: http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-cost...

List price = MSRP/Cover Price.

If John Grisham has 10% printing costs, I think everyone else is likely to. The problem with extrapolating from self-pub figures is that these companies make money off of printing. Publishers don't make a penny off of printing, they make their money once pre-production and marketing has been paid off.

Of course every book is unique, some writers are awful and need more editing, others are brilliant and need none. Colour pages drive up prices ridiculously and non-fiction books are not priced like fiction, which is the major debate piece on the eBook front, discussing non-fiction is rather irrelevant as prices are based on work regardless of cost, plus they need to pay off expenses fast due to far lower sale volumes.

But do the publishers really not make a penny off of printing? In the music business, the labels often own the manufacturing plants as well...is that not the case in print publishing?

You miss my point entirely. When calculating the cost to manufacture a book, you don't do it as a percentage of the list price. In fact, for a $40 best seller, I'm betting it's the inverse, as the volume for those go up, the printing price drops down to the order of $1.50 - $2.

What I was trying to emphasize, is that unlike most goods and products, that have their final cost as a markup to the physical cost, Books are more like software - the actual manufacturing cost doesn't play much of a role in the list price.

So, to say that "Average cost of manufacturing a book is 10% of list" is to imply that there is a relationship between list price and manufacturing cost of a book.

Whether, in the end, it turns out be 10% or 15% or 5% as an "average" is mostly irrelevant to the core of our discussion, which is "eBook Pricing versus Physical Book Pricing".

This is _particularly_ important with regards to the conversation at hand, as the Publishers are mostly focused on the final retail price being charged to the customer, and probably aren't that excited about whether it comes from an eBook or Hardcover. This is counter-intuitive to most people who thing _OF COURSE_ a publisher would rather get $10 for an eBook (With DRM, non copyable, non-lendable, close to zero manufacturing /shipping costs, fewer returns) versus a HardCover book, and all the costs associated with it.

What I'm trying to highlight is that, at the end of the day, the List Price <-> Manufacturing Cost relationship is not as straightforward as "Printing Cost is 10% of list price"

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