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,
