JohnSnow said:
Purchase (or sale) price has nothing to do with what something costs to produce. You may have some vague concept of the law (although you seem to have a funny idea about ownership when you talk about losing the rights to something someone stole from you...), but your knowledge of basic business practices is pretty sketchy.
If you don't have the original, you have no right to the copy. Ask a lawyer, I did. It was part of a grad course on intellectual property and copyright. You can make a backup but you must also retain the original. If you lose the original, you're out of luck. Same if it's stolen or you sell it.
Price is something you set based on the value of the product you're providing. What's the utility of a digital edition compared to a physical book? It's less easily referenced at the table, but it can be put in multiple locations and all the books more easily transported. So, which wins out?
Retail price of a book is directly tied to the cost of production (including printing costs). The wholesalers take 70% of retail, giving the 30% to the publisher for each copy. That 30% has to not only cover the cost of production, but have some amount of profit. I've been in publishing for years. I've dealt with printers, costs, and pricing. This is how the industry works.
You're still playing the same game, and getting the same ruleset. If WotC decides to charge for a .pdf that you can put on, say, 5 computers, the place to start your pricing strategy is approximately that of a physical copy of the book, because you know how well that sells. Then, perhaps, you discount it based on a perceived lesser value.
You purchase a single copy of a pdf, not the rights to duplicate it. That's the very attitude that scares the hell out of publishers and prevents them from releasing pdfs.
But honestly, it has nothing to do with supply chain, distribution, or markups. That's why you pay $1 a song on iTunes, even though you might be able to buy a full album for $8 on Borders.
If you think the cost of products has nothing to do with supply chains, distribution, and markups, then you don't know anything about business.
Digital media does a great job of reducing costs in certain areas (printing, retail locations, wholesalers) but it still has to be distributed. Itunes takes a cut, just like every other distributor. There are different factors involved, but it's basically the same. Your income from a sale has to cover the cost of production (printing, art, studio time, etc) and include some profit. If you sales don't cover production cost, you're losing money with each sale and you won't last long as a business.
You pay $1 on a song from itunes because they know (and the music industry knows) that they either price the songs low enough or people will just go out and steal them. A physical CD costs $15 for a few songs you like and a few songs you might not like. You can illegally download all of them for free, or you can pay $4 to itunes for the songs you want off the album. At least through itunes the musicians make some money. That's why itunes is so cheap. Comparing itunes to bargain priced CDs is a bit silly.
