Why eBooks are Important
I know most of my friends do not share my enthusiasm for ebooks and epublishing. I do not think they really grasp the importance of it.
The costs involved in producing and selling a traditional book are prohibitive for the average person. You would need to buy a printing press, facilities, trained workers, trucks for distribution, and a network to get your books into the hands of retailer and distributors.
Publishing an ebook can all be done by one person and a computer. While there are costs involved, none come even close to the price of a small offset printing press. Distribution and fulfillment can be done over the internet. Literally, the publisher does not have to leave the room, he/she calls an office in order to publish, sell and deliver that ebook. This is an incredibly democratizing force.
Before the capital costs of publishing meant that only a select few companies could produce books for sale on just a national scale. Today with ebooks, a single person of modest means can publish and distribute their ebook globally. That change is going to prove profound in the future.
2 Comments:
While I agree with you that ebooks could be important, I find some of the things you say in this post very inaccurate. For example, you state, "The costs involved in producing and selling a traditional book are prohibitive for the average person. You would need to buy a printing press, facilities, trained workers, trucks for distribution, and a network to get your books into the hands of retailer and distributors."
In reality, you can print in volumes as low as 1, for as low as around $4.00 with print on demand. You don't have to buy a whole plant and train people or even buy 1,000 books at time. Distribution is a variable cost, which means you can go with a distributor and they will charge you a percent of each book they sell through their channels. Depending on the distributor, there are no upfront costs besides shipping them the books.
I actually made a blog post (http://www.successmanifesto.com/blogs/young-entrepreneur/archives/000086.html) about the costs of self-publishing and many of the costs, such as layout, ISBN number, and editing must be done both with ebook and paperback.
I should have been more clear. By "traditional" book I really meant traditional publication, that is, like Random House publishes a book. I was not including POD in that. POD is a good technology and definitely a part of any publication plan, because some people will never read an ebook even for free and the costs of POD are very reasonable.
However, POD publication does make one more reliant on other people and their investment in capital goods (they had to buy the machine that prints and binds the books on demand.) I think the two technologies compliment each other and I think most self-publishers should publish in both POD and ebook formats and give readers the choice.
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