There’s clearly a cost associated with
producing an e-book, but does anyone, other than publishers, really care?
Author Chuck Wendig makes that case on his
blog, terribleminds,
while Matthew
Ingram said e-book costs don’t matter in GigaOm and
Mike Masnick wrote that nobody cares about the “fixed costs of books, movies,
whatever” in his TechDirt blog.
It’s not hard to see their point, considering Amazon’s aggressive e-book
pricing policies, coupled with the assumption many consumers have that
publishers have cut their manufacturing and distribution costs yet are still trying
to keep e-book prices near that of a printed book.
But there are real costs of publishing that
can’t be brushed aside so easily, according to Ryan Chittum, deputy editor of
the business section in the Columbia Journalism Review. It’s a balancing act
between paying expenses and offering a price consumers are willing to pay.
“In
reality, as in theory, the market for books is only so big—we only have so much
time—so a 99-cent price point might move a lot of units, but not enough to
justify the cost of production,” Chittum wrote. “Obviously, a $50 price point would crush sales and also bring
in much less revenue overall.”
The thing is, e-book pricing really isn’t different
from any other pricing strategy. Consumers always look for the best price and a
good value. It’s up to the publishing industry to find a way to deliver that
value and make money at the same time.
