From the publisher’s point of view, consumers may be expecting too much (or too little) regarding the current and future price of books. While theoretically an e-book costs less to produce than a printed version of the same material, this is not necessarily the case.
According to a recent report in The New York Times, a breakdown of the relative costs involved in publishing a book in hardcopy as opposed to digital leaves less overall profit for the publisher, at least under current conditions. The example quoted shows the average cost to the consumer of a new hardcover best seller is about $26.00. Of that amount, about half goes to the publisher, but then there are additional costs such as cover design, copy editing and of course payment to the author. In this case the publisher winds up with just over $4.00, and there are still overhead costs like office space to be considered.
The new agreement between publishers and Apple’s iBookstore allots 30% of the sale price of an e-book to the hardware makers, leaving 70% for the publishers. From the gross profit, e-book publishers must pay to have the copy converted and typeset into digital form; marketing costs are also added in.
On the Amazon Kindle site, where hardcover best sellers are priced at $9.99, publishers are using the introduction of Apple’s iPad as leverage to raise their prices, and the competition in the bookselling market has become known in the industry as “the Amazon versus Apple E-book Wars.”
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