Re: The Psychology of pricing

From: Brad Jensen <brad_at_elstore.com>
Date: Tue 03 Oct 2000 15:29:32 -0500

MICHAEL MARTINEZ <Michael_at_xenite.org> WROTE:
> I've been following eBook discussions in various
> forums. Talk about one of those armchair industries
> where everyone has an opinion! Electronic publishing
> has been around at least since Project Gutenberg
> started its free etext library of public domain works
> on a Xerox server around 1970. And yet we're still
> trying to figure out all the rules.

Book publishing and distribution has a lot of markup in
it - about 60% of the retail price of a book is markup
after it leaves the publisher, perhaps more.

So an ebook that costs 40% of the paper version is
still just as profitable to the publisher, all else
being equal.

But all else isn't equal. There's no printing, no
warehousing, no inventory selection cost, no ordering
costs, no return costs, no cost for unsold inventory.

I would think that a well-run ebook publishing concern
could make good money at about 25% of retail cost, or
even less. Author's royalty becomes a significant
expense.

Brad Jensen brad_at_elstore.com
President
Electronic Storage Corporation Tulsa OK USA
918-664-7276
LaserVault Report Retrieval & Data Mining
www.Laservault.com





Received on Tue Oct 03 2000 - 15:29:32 CDT