Cost of digital book compared to normal book

Back? The future of books

Description:

As ebooks are still very much an emerging market, there are no real clear figures on what it costs to selling an ebook in comparison to a printed book. As more companies are starting to sell ebooks, it is clear that the price of an ebook is, in most cases, a lot lower than the price of a printed book. This observation calls for a question though; How is it possible that ebooks are sold at a price of $9.99 (amazon) and normal books are sold at a price of around $20 while the printing costs only amount to about 17%? Assuming there are virtually no costs for making an ebook, the publisher will sell the ebook for 17% less to the distributor. This would mean, that there is no possible way a distributor can make the same amount of money on an ebook as it makes on a printed book. (see breakdown of costs of publisher - cheat sheet)