project for school: Impact of E-books on Publishing

[EP]

E-Publishing really has allowed any man and his dog to publish a book. Quality has serriously suffered for that, but it has opened a lot of doors.

Every entertainment industry has their "home skilled" niche. Direct-to-DVDs are an example, and yet they still do enough money that your local shelves now have Starship Troopers 3. A large number of people might just say "what the hell" and keep going, but there is a steady enough clientele that says "Sweet! The first two were gory as hell."

Same with us. The quality will vary, but there is still a market for people who have not the time or desire to create their own stuff to pick up material that is cheaper, yet fills the need. Regardless of quality, even if they will admit to its lesser attributes.

 

[Kraftworks]

I'm a college student working on a project for class. My topic is the impact E-Books have had on independent and desktop publishing.

I know this is a broad generalisation but when I first looked at producing a game supplement printed products followed the 40:20:40 rule. That is, of the cover price the publisher got 40%, the distributor 20%, and the retailer 40%. For the self-publisher this means that their 40% has to cover everything up to delivery of the product to the distributor's warehouse -- artwork, research, writing, layout, editing, printing, packaging, and so on. To make this viable the print-runs have to be reasonably large -- you might cover your costs with an initial print run of 2,500 units.

Self-publishing is simply far more viable these days for most would-be first time author/publishers. You can do the whole thing yourself, from product creation through product distribution through online retail sales. So to me it's not just the Ebook that's made self-publishing easier -- it's desktop-publishing software, it's locating artists and editors on the net, its the ease of research with the internet, it's the availability of print on demand, it's the ease of website creation, online advertising, and the handling of electronic sales. All of these things have assisted the would-be self-publisher get their first product out. You can literally do the whole thing yourself -- or you can sell your product through other online stores. Either way you are doing far, far better than the old 40:20:40 rule and you're not sinking as much of your own cash into that initial print run.

Regards,