@robin1 Complete Rot
Sorry but you are 100% wrong here.
There are many more independent publishers and smaller houses that do not have loads of interns or staff. In fact even the bigger houses are now shedding workers.
(Good) Marketing will generally be budgeted at around 10-15% of the cover price. Doing it for less will not sell books plain and simple. 5% is about right only when you are talking about books costing around £10 and being sold in their 100,000s.
As for spelling and grammar, even with a good in-house person (because software cannot and will never be able to do the job as accurately), it can often cost quite a bit to keep them on payroll. Consider that I spend £50 on a proof-reader for a 70-page book that was relatively low budget!
Proof copies also come out of the marketing budget and do cost money. Granted they don't cost a lot but one certainly wouldn't hand them to friends and family. Reviewers yes, but never friends and family...a waste of time and money I'm afraid.
I could go on and on but it is clear you've not got a clue.
Let me give you a real break-down of the cost of a 100-page paperback at least:
ISBN (Necessary to sell in stores and only available in quantities of 10, 100 or 1,000 so this is what it cost per book): £23
1st Proof-Reading: £50
Cover Design: £25-£250
Copy Writer (for back-cover blurb): £25-75
4 Proof Copies: £12
2nd Proof Reading: £50
Print Run (250 copies): £750
Total Cost: £935 or £3.74 per book
Each bookstore demands a different margin but let's say they a 40% margin as average the cost of the book to the customer would have to be: £8 per book.
Of that the bookstore receives: £3.20 per book
The Publisher's profit is: £1.06 per book
However, the publisher then has to look at paying the author so based on an extremely generous 50/50 profit share on a run of 250 book the publisher would only make: £132.5
For a project that could have spent months in the making (and they really can) the margin is remarkably slim. It also assumes that the publisher sub-contracts out rather than hires people.
Given then that there is more outlay to produce an eBook and that the market is so incredably small and has no universal format what is our incentive to publish eBooks?