Kindle Book Prices?

[Mark]

I've heard that because of the wording in many contracts, authors do have separate (often more lucrative) deals on electronic versions of their books.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Canis, not to pick on you, but you have two facts very wrong in your assertions.

Paper and shipping make up a pretty large percentage of the purchase price of the book.

No, they don't.

It comes as a surprise to a lot of people--myself included when I first began looking into this--but printing and shipping make up a fairly small portion of the price. Obviously, it varies based on the company, the print size, distribution deals, printing locations, etc. But based on my research after the recent Amazon/Macmillan kerfuffle, the general accepted range in publishing (or at least fiction publishing) these days is between 3% and 10% of total costs.

That's not a typo. Three-to-ten percent.

Warehousing adds a bit, but not very much. And often, warehousing costs are assumed by the vendors (i.e. Amazon) as much as, or more than, the publisher.

I have a small amount of sketchy info and a large amount of suspicions about where all that free money ends up, and if you think the author gets a slice, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. Great view of Brooklyn.

While the precise details depend on the contract, and yes, where the numbers should fall is a major point of contention between authors and publishers. But authors do tend to make higher royalties on e-books than hardcopies. Maybe not enough more, and maybe not always if they have an old or poorly vetted contract. But on average.

 

[Mouseferatu]

And note that by "maybe not enough" I mean "definitely not enough." But it also wouldn't be accurate to say there's no difference between books and e-books where royalties are concerned.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

I stand corrected. Interesting. That puts a lot of the complaints I get from textbook publishers about their supply costs in a very different light.

I learn something new every day, and it's frequently helpful.

So... if paper, shipping, and warehousing aren't the costs that are killing them, and personnel sure isn't, and I know for a fact customer service isn't even on the list... what costs are they complaining about?

EDIT:
I also know from knowing some textbook editors and "authors" personally that they aren't paying most of their "talent" particularly well. What hole is all this money going into?

EDIT2:
Clearly I should stick to things I understand: games and science. Every time I talk about business, someone who actually understands it schools me

 

[Mouseferatu]

I stand corrected. Interesting. That puts a lot of the complaints I get from textbook publishers about their supply costs in a very different light.

Well, do keep in mind that what (little ) I know is limited to fiction, and even more specifically sci-fi/fantasy. I have no idea if the numbers apply even to other popular fiction (things like print sizes may be vastly different), let alone how it applies to things like textbooks. So be very careful applying this to any other arena.

So... if paper, shipping, and warehousing aren't the costs that are killing them, and personnel sure isn't, and I know for a fact customer service isn't even on the list... what costs are they complaining about?

It's probably all of these together. Even at the best of times, publishing has a fairly slim profit-margin; it's why publishers are so focused on finding their next best-seller. So even if Expense X only accounts for, say, 10% of their total costs, then if Expense X rises, profits can dwindle really fast.