Re: Sod the lot of them
"Despite the almost complete lack of printing costs, distribution costs, etc., etc., etc... the books should be priced for the lack of these costs, and thus portionally cheaper and those who want them in REAL paper, should have them priced accordingly, to include those costs."
OK. Declaration of interest.
I have been known to write a book. Or two. Or even... well, never mind. And I could say 'well, if you go to the Independant e-publishers, or even self-publishers, you can indeed find e-books at much lower costs. And some of them (no - I'm not saying mine - of course I'm not saying not-mine either :-P) are very good. Maybe even a lot of them.
But then people start saying the same types of thing. 'Yes, but they're all crap.' 'Yes, but none of them have even _seen_ an Editor. Well, crap is a value judgement. But as soon as you start adding in costs like that Editor (or more likely Editors) - you start getting back to similar costs to paper.
This is from the 'Editorial Freelancers Association (http://the-efa.org/res/rates.php). It's their current recommended rates for Editing services:
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Common editorial rates —regardless of whether a project is flat rate or hourly— tend to fall within the ranges indicated below. These should be used only as a rough guideline; rates vary considerably depending on the nature of the work, the time frame of the assignment, the degree of special expertise required, and other factors. The industry standard for a manuscript page, however, is a firm 250 words.
Editing, basic copyediting 5-10 ms pgs/hr $30-40/hr
Editing, heavy copyediting 2–5 ms pgs/hr $40–50/hr
Editing, website copyediting $40-50/hr
Editing, developmental 1–5 pgs/hr $45–55/hr
Editing, substantive or line 1–6 ms pgs/hr $40–60/hr
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Of course, not every small-market Editor will charge these rates. One Editor I've worked with personally fell flat on the floor gibbering when I showed them to her - because she would never charge anything that high. On the other hand, she works for one of my publishers, and rarely if ever does Freelance. So lets look at these rates,and take a novel, length 80,000 words.
At 250 words per 'page', our novel is 320 pages long. Let's assume we're going to want Content Editing and Line Editing. Content Editing and 'Developmental' Editing are close enough, so we'll use that for Content, and take mid-range numbers. We could sicuss the difference between 'Copyediting' and 'Line Editing', but for the purposes of the example I'll use 'Substantive or Line' Editing from the chart for Line Editing.
So:
Copy Editing: 320 pages, 2.5 pages per hour, $50 per hour. 320 pages = 128 hours = $6,400
Line Editing: 320 pages, 3 pages per hour, $50 per hour. 320 pages = 106 and two thirds hours = $5,333
Total: $11,733
Riiiiiight .
Now. Don't get me wrong. Like I said, not every small market Editor, maybe not even close to every Editor will charge these. And don't get me even wrong-er. I would never under-value the, um, value of an Editor's services.
But if you use those services (or your publisher does), the costs still have to be recovered. And we haven;t even _touched_ Cover Art yet.
But you can still get Independantly e-published and self-published books for a fraction of the price of Big Five or Main-Street e-published. Who knows. You might even like it!