Book People Archive

once again, o'reilly has a clue, and guts too



once again, o'reilly has a clue, and guts too:

>    http://journals.aol.com/bowerbird/bowerbirdseyeview

thank heaven for the pioneers...

-bowerbird

p.s.   a point relevant to a longstanding point of contention here:

>    print publishing is very much a "tipping point" business. 
>    While customers naively assume that printing is 
>    a large part of the retail cost of a book, 
>    for a successful, high volume computer book, 
>    it typically represents less than 10% of the list price. 
>    Distribution costs (including retailer discount, 
>    warehousing, and physical distribution), by contrast, 
>    represent more than 60% of the list price!

yes, the entire situation gets considerably more thorny, of course,
which to its credit this piece does a rather good job of explicating.
still, i could help but notice that word "naively".   telling, isn't it?