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Harry Simenon
Unity Member
Post Number:
1621
Registered: 10-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - 03:05 pm: |   |
Just came across this article:
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2002/12/03/prices/index.html?pn=1
It's rather long, so just a few excerpts:
"It's just too expensive," one Chicago book buyer said recently at a Barnes & Noble, putting down the new hardcover by a favorite author, Chuck Palahniuk, even though it was discounted 20 percent. "I used to buy more books and be willing to try new authors. But you don't know if the book's going to be good or not and it's too expensive to try something new or even an author I usually like."
"Why do books cost so much? Consumers are often baffled at the price tag attached to what appears to be little more than a mass of paper, cardboard and ink. A whole host of factors, including the size of the book, the quality of paper, the quantity of books printed, whether it contains illustrations, what sort of deal the publisher can make with the printer and the cost of warehouse space, all affect the production costs of a book. But, roughly speaking, only about 20 percent of a publisher's budget for each book pays for paper, printing and binding, the trinity that determines the physical cost.
The rest of what you shell out for, say, the new Donna Tartt novel pays for the publisher's overhead (the cost of maintaining a staff of editors, proofreaders, book designers, publicists, sales representatives and so on), and for the cuts taken by distributors (who run warehouses that supply books to retailers) and booksellers. Promoting the book is another expense: printing up catalogs presenting each season's titles to booksellers and the media, purchasing ads, mailing out hundreds of review copies to critics and sending the author (if he or she is lucky) on a book tour. So are shipping fees and the storage costs on unsold copies." |
Gloria Marlow
Unity Member
Post Number:
2001
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - 07:29 pm: | |
I have been surprised by the quick rise in price of the mass market paperbacks I like to read. A few years ago, they were 4.99 to 5.99. Then, a few rose to 6.99. Now they are all routinely 7.99 to 8.99. As a woman who has let that dollar difference in price very often determine which book she's buying, the costs increase has been difficult. It doesn't seem that the prices for trade paperbacks or hardcover editions have increased to such a degree. Of course, they were already more.
.
Anyway, buying a good book is one of the few total luxuries I allow myself, so I just go to Walmart where the same book that at Barnes and Noble is 8 or 9 dollars is under 6.
Gloria
Gloria
www.gloriamarlow.com
Flowers for Megan**Shades of Silence**The Butterfly Game
|
Todd Hunter
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
3632
Registered: 02-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - 07:53 pm: | |
It's a dastardly thing I do (being a wannabe author myself), but I like to buy remaindered hardbacks...
People are still willing to line themselves up in order to shell out tons of money for the latest Harry Potter. So, not everyone is letting the increasing price of books stop them from making those purchases.
The trick is to develop a following to where people will pay for your books, no matter the cost...
Or to self-publish and open up your sales avenues to offer your books through different channels (which don't require the distribution costs)...
The self-publishing book I purchased to read up on the subject suggested a price of around 5X your per-book cost.
Mindsight Moderator
Aston's Blog |
Todd Hunter
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
3633
Registered: 02-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - 07:55 pm: | |
The other way to do it (something I'm contemplating with FID) would be to offer an e-book for free, and put the hard copy for sale. Most people have this aversion to reading an entire book online, but if they read 2-3 chapters and like it, they'll be more willing to fork over the money for the full thing.
Mindsight Moderator
Aston's Blog |
Harry Simenon
Unity Member
Post Number:
1622
Registered: 10-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 01:41 am: | |
That might be a good idea indeed Todd. People are not willing to pay a lot of money when they don't know about the quality of the book. When they read part of it as an E-book, they just might buy the hardcopy. (I don't like reading from a monitor as wel) |
Fred Dungan
Unity Member
Post Number:
1950
Registered: 10-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 01:06 am: | |
All of my books are available as ebooks online for free. I use the ebooks as an inducement to purchase the paperback. This can serve your purposes, but not always. You have to watch your stats. If your online ebook is getting 100 visits per day (visits are hits that linger long enough to read a chapter or two) and nobody is ordering the paperback, then it may be time to change your tactics. Sometimes a high school teacher will use an online book as a text (this occurred more than once with Bushwhacked) and you lose a sizeable chunk of income that you might not have lost had you not placed the entire book online. I had students write me concerning chapters that they had been assigned to read for school (usually asking me to help in some way). If I had not had PublishAmerica for a publisher, Bushwhacked might have gone somewhere. But nobody in their right mind is going to pay $17 to $20 for a poorly printed 212 page paperback book. How Wilhem Meiners managed to mess up a competently edited and proofread manuscript - it had already gone through the pre-publication process by Richard Purdue at Superior Books and his company had backed out of the deal due to complications resulting from 9/11 (too controversial) - is a mystery to me. The book had been digitally prepared - all the electrons were organized in the correct order - and Wilhem Meiners short-circuited it. Quality obviously matters more than price. A shoddily produced book, e.g. Atlanta Nights, is destined to go nowhere. In fact, such books aren't even fit for friends and family.
http://www.fdungan.com/bushwhacked.htm |
Harry Simenon
Unity Member
Post Number:
1623
Registered: 10-2003
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 06:54 am: | |
"How Wilhem Meiners managed to mess up a competently edited and proofread manuscript -(...) - is a mystery to me."
Well, leave that to PA, there are very profesional about messing up lay out and editing. They managed to add about 400 weird errors to my own errors I had missed, and then thought it was my job to remove them in a few days. And then I was refused to make any changes...
No wonder their books are so expensive after all that hard work! |
Tom Elkins
Wisdom Member
Post Number:
806
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 12, 2007 - 07:04 am: | |
We're like all God's chillun' - buy cheap, sell high. Anything else is unthinkable.
Tom Elkins
NORTH of TEXAS
www.authorsden.com/tomelkins |
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