People are overestimating what it costs to actually print and ship a book by a huge amount.
Printing is pretty much the most efficient manufacturing process in the world. You make thousands and thousands at a time on a dedicated machine that runs 24/7. You can put hundreds of thousands of them into a container, and ship that container across an ocean for $4,000. Or you can truck it around the country for that price too. And there are plenty of distributors that can drop ship them for you. Or you can just dump a couple containers at an Amazon distribution center and let them handle it all.
I would guess that $1-2 of a $7 paperback is paper, printing, and transport.
Remember, we print free newspapers everyday by the millions. And we flush paper down the toilet. And we wipe our hands with a big piece of paper with printing and texture on them and throw it away without a second thought. Paper is basically the cheapest 'thing' we have in the world today.
I agree that in many cases the costs of producing a printed version of a product vs the digital version is being over estimated. In my case at least the pricing of digital goods is losing authors sales any way. I'm not going to pay $9.99 for an e-book when the same book is available in paperback for $7.99. I see this constantly and books that I would have otherwise tried I simply skip. If we simply say that printing costs and digital distribution costs are very similar due to the efficiencies of our manufacturing and shipping systems I'll accept that argument. Charge me the same price for the digital version then, not more.
> I would guess that $1-2 of a $7 paperback is paper, printing, and transport.
OK. Every digital book in existence should be $1-$2 less than it's paper equivalent.
If it's not, that's the content creator trying to rip consumers off.
Printing is pretty much the most efficient manufacturing process in the world. You make thousands and thousands at a time on a dedicated machine that runs 24/7. You can put hundreds of thousands of them into a container, and ship that container across an ocean for $4,000. Or you can truck it around the country for that price too. And there are plenty of distributors that can drop ship them for you. Or you can just dump a couple containers at an Amazon distribution center and let them handle it all.
I would guess that $1-2 of a $7 paperback is paper, printing, and transport.
Remember, we print free newspapers everyday by the millions. And we flush paper down the toilet. And we wipe our hands with a big piece of paper with printing and texture on them and throw it away without a second thought. Paper is basically the cheapest 'thing' we have in the world today.