"The Printing process costs, on average, 10% ($4) of the cover price of a book, "
So, "Printing Process" is not a function of the cover price of the book. It is a function of what size of book, spine design, what type of binding, what type of covers, whether there is printing on the inside of the cover, whether there is color, what type of paper, and how many pages, and how many books you will be printing.
For example, sitting on my bed right now are two softcover books:
"Maps in a mirror, short fiction of Orson Scott Card", 671 pages, $23.95 list.
"Advanced Unix Programming, Second Edition", 717 pages, $64.99 list.
Both Black and White, perfect Binding, color cover, no printing on inside of covers.
http://www.instantpublisher.com/Price-quote.aspx sugests that the cost of each should be $4.72 - which is 19% of the Orson Scott Card, and 7.2% of Advanced Unix Printing.
In addition, this is what it would cost _me_ - I have to believe that large publishers are able to print their books for less that what I would pay.
What would the author's rough estimates look like if they were "in excellent agreement" with yours? Would "11%" be close enough for you, or are you holding out for "12.8% to 13.3%"?
Can I suggest that you read the Wikipedia article on "orders of approximation"? Or, better yet, "Fermi problem"?
What I was trying to emphasize, is that unlike most goods and products, that have their final cost as a markup to the physical cost, Books are more like software - the actual manufacturing cost doesn't play much of a role in the list price.
So, to say that "Average cost of manufacturing a book is 10% of list" is to imply that there is a relationship between list price and manufacturing cost of a book.
Whether, in the end, it turns out be 10% or 15% or 5% as an "average" is mostly irrelevant to the core of our discussion, which is "eBook Pricing versus Physical Book Pricing".
This is _particularly_ important with regards to the conversation at hand, as the Publishers are mostly focused on the final retail price being charged to the customer, and probably aren't that excited about whether it comes from an eBook or Hardcover. This is counter-intuitive to most people who thing _OF COURSE_ a publisher would rather get $10 for an eBook (With DRM, non copyable, non-lendable, close to zero manufacturing /shipping costs, fewer returns) versus a HardCover book, and all the costs associated with it.
What I'm trying to highlight is that, at the end of the day, the List Price <-> Manufacturing Cost relationship is not as straightforward as "Printing Cost is 10% of list price"
Here's the best written I could find: http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-cost...
List price = MSRP/Cover Price.
If John Grisham has 10% printing costs, I think everyone else is likely to. The problem with extrapolating from self-pub figures is that these companies make money off of printing. Publishers don't make a penny off of printing, they make their money once pre-production and marketing has been paid off.
Of course every book is unique, some writers are awful and need more editing, others are brilliant and need none. Colour pages drive up prices ridiculously and non-fiction books are not priced like fiction, which is the major debate piece on the eBook front, discussing non-fiction is rather irrelevant as prices are based on work regardless of cost, plus they need to pay off expenses fast due to far lower sale volumes.
At some point many of these costs may be significantly wiped out, e.g., by cutting out much of marketing (as well as shipping, wholesalers, etc.). What if writing/"publishing"/marketing of "books" (fiction & nonfiction) became a mutant of current blogging: with the public voting/marketing through the digital social media.
An ebook revolution is not going to happen IMHO through supporting the existing overheads of the 20th century publishing model.
The concept of "publisher as angel investor" only works if you assume the old publishing model of printing, storing, and distributing physical objects.
Electronic publishing is a completely different cost paradigm.
In addition, you, the reader, still needs someone to help you sort through the vast amount of stuff out there that you could read. Publishers, for all their other ills, help do this to some extent, despite all the false positives and false negatives that get through (or don't).
Electronic publishing might eventually become "a completely different cost paradigm," but it sure isn't there yet.
Why are we equating a published singular book with an ebook? Net loss per ebook can only be calculated based on the number of ebooks sold, not on the number of ebooks produced. One ebook is equivalent to thousands of ebooks, there is no difference.
People, it's digital.
I didn't get into a discussion of benefits of eBooks, especially when colour e-ink readers arrive. Specifically comics and graphic novels would likely fare excellently, low editing costs (almost all the work is done by the author art, inking, and minor amounts of writing), virtually no marketing or advertising costs make printing (higher than a simple black-ink book) and distribution the major costs. It could literally be back to $0.99 comic books. Printing in comics can be up to 40% of cover price, distribution taking 30%, which compared to a book is killer.
I have no intention to say eBooks aren't going to become huge one day, but many of the costs in book making are from well before the ink hits paper. Unless you're willing to sacrifice quality, the prices are going to remain very close.
