E-arcs, and publishing new books, how does it work?

Silly preview function!

I understand that materials, printing and distribution are not Significant portions of the cost. But they are A portion. If Amazon is selling an e-book for more than the MMPB, as they seem to be doing in many cases, all I can infer from that as the consumer is that they're greedy.

Even if it costs 25 cents to print and distribute an individual book, I'd expect that the e-book would be at least 12 cents cheaper than the paperback. On a $7 book, if $0.25 was hardcopy costs, it is a negligible cost but still a discount I as the consumer would expect to see some portion there of.

Fireflair wrote:Silly preview function!

I understand that materials, printing and distribution are not Significant portions of the cost. But they are A portion. If Amazon is selling an e-book for more than the MMPB, as they seem to be doing in many cases, all I can infer from that as the consumer is that they're greedy.

Even if it costs 25 cents to print and distribute an individual book, I'd expect that the e-book would be at least 12 cents cheaper than the paperback. On a $7 book, if $0.25 was hardcopy costs, it is a negligible cost but still a discount I as the consumer would expect to see some portion there of.

As long as they're not charging more than their contracts with the publishers allow, they're within their rights. Why they would do that would be dependent on their marketing algorithms, I think. Remember, although they look like a retailer to us, they're really a distributor, and their perception of the market is probably different than ours.

If they are charging more than their contracts with the publishers allow, that needs to be reported to the publishers. Good luck in proving it, though.