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)
Enablers:
1. Low price of producing digital book 2. Availability of open-source software 3. Better distribution networks for ebooks 4. Lower price of bandwidth
Inhibitors:
1. Lower price of paper makes regular publishing cheaper 2. Consumers want to pay far less for virtual products 3. Vague price models for ebook retailers 4. Hard to set up private distribution