That's the key underlying point, in fact, to the whole argument: Amazon could sell ebooks for $ 9.99 and break even or make a bit of money even if they pay their wholesale pulp brink price to the publishers, and the publishers make money on the ebooks even if they do take some discount, because
ebooks cost nothing on the margin to produce.
That idea is even more tempting when you consider
eBooks cost nothing to manufacture beyond the cost to create the first copy.
An ebook costs nothing for a publisher.
I'd agree printing and shipping
an ebook costs nothing.
An ebook costs nothing to publish and ship.
Not exact matches
Other major publishers may be content to reap record profits off the growth of
ebook sales while paying authors practically
nothing for digital books with far lower production and distribution
costs, but we wouldn't feel right doing that.
But I was able to do that and was able to deliver the
eBook copies, so it
cost me
nothing, and able to get reviews for my book that way.
It can
cost you
nothing if you already intend to publish your book in
eBook format.
If I write a book I can easily convert it to
eBook format,
costing me
nothing, and I can use CreateSpace or Smashwords and create a print book with worldwide channel distribution... again, for
nothing.
eBooks especially
cost almost
nothing to produce and are far easier to publish than many people believe.
All you need to giveaway is the
ebook, which
costs you
nothing.
If your goal is to generate business with your book, giving away the
ebook version
costs you
nothing, yet can yield big rewards.
Fortunately, there are a few other options out there which
cost nothing but the time to download — they are freeware — and offer a more user - friendly interface with
eBooks.
Then there's initiatives like Kindle Unlimited ---- basically, Spotify for Kindle titles ---- and Amazon Prime membership, which grants you access to the Kindle Lending Library, where you can, as the name suggests, borrow
eBooks for a fixed term for absolutely
nothing (save for the
cost of your Prime membership).
Publish digitally, do nt overcharge for your
ebooks (9.00 for a digital copy of a book you can buy in paperback for 5bucks, when it
costs little to
nothing per copy to make a digital version available?
It
costs Amazon almost
nothing to make and distribute 100 copies of an
ebook file to sell to 100 different customers.
I understand very well the mentality that a «dead tree» book is «something» that people pay for without argument because it's a material object while an
ebook seems to be regarded (even by many fans of the medium) as something that
costs «
nothing» and should therefore be free or very cheap, which brings me to...
It
costs nothing to produce an
ebook!»
Their
ebook copies on DrivethruRPG still
cost $ 30 and I get
nothing from it.
However, with
ebooks, we now have a very different situation — Failure
costs next to
nothing.
Since the production
cost on an
ebook is next to
nothing, it's not like the publishers lose money when they are priced lower, they just make less of it per unit.
If you have both a printed version and an
eBook available, ensure the price difference reflects the fact it
costs you money to print a book, but
nothing for a download.
Whilst this was probably true in many cases, I do believe that things have changed in recent years, especially with the arrival of
ebooks that
cost nothing to publish and allow authors to cut out the middleman who would take so much of their profits.
Publishers seem to be scared of their digital editions and you can still come across that absurd scenario in which an
eBook will be priced the same as its hardback equivalent — this despite the fact a digital file
costs little to create and more or less
nothing to store and distribute.
It
costs nothing to sell
ebooks on Amazon or distribute to bookstores and libraries.
Since it
costs nothing, it's more like «Why WOULD N'T you have an
ebook version?»
Self - publishing an
ebook costs next to
nothing, especially if you can design your own cover and get a fellow writer to exchange editing / proofing duties with you.