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Dominique Raccah talks about ebook costs
October 7, 2010 | 9:54 am
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By Paul Biba
The Bookseller has an article about Raccah’s talk at the Tools of Change in Frankfurt. Raccah is the publisher of Sourcebooks. Here’s a bit of it. This is a topic that publishers have not taken the trouble to explain – other than to make some rather bold and unsupported statements – so it’s good to hear something from a reliable source:
Speaking at Tools of Change Frankfurt on Tuesday (5th October), Raccah said that there were huge additional costs associated with publishers producing digital products. “With printed books we ship exactly the same product to different retailers, not so with e-books, and that ‘not so’ has some very large implications and enormous costs.” She said publishers had to consider meta-data, the file format, the costs of enhanced media, and the ongoing developmental costs of products such as apps.
Unsurprisingly, Raccah rounded on the idea that e-books should be “free or $0.99″. She said: “It comes from the concept that we are not adding any value, and I feel we are adding a lot of value, and it’s not cheap.” She added: “Book publishing is not book printing, let’s be really clear about that: if you think all publishers do is print, you have a problem.”
Raccah admitted that moving into e-books had introduced 80 new steps into Sourcebooks’ workflow—all manual—adding that the proliferation of e-booksellers and e-book devices only added more layers of toil: “As workflow explodes”.
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Comments:
I find the statements by Ms Raccah extremely questionable. She may be described as a ‘reliable source’ but she doesn’t gain any credibility with the rubbish she comes up with here.
Ms Raccah talks about 80 new manual steps involved in producing an eBook over and above that to produce a paper book. Yet she does not give us any, never mind a sample group, of examples. Hmmmmm.
She mentions “meta-data, the file format, the costs of enhanced media, and the ongoing developmental costs of products such as apps.”
Well meta data is simply not a cost issue no matter what she says, as it involves less than an hour work to fill in per book at the VERY MOST. File format means converting the computer document into two or three formats which takes about an HOUR at the very most and that is the job done for the whole sales run of that book. File formatting is also easily automated, meaning even lower costs.
Enhanced media is irrelevant for novels and most eBooks other than reference books or text books. Apps cost is also irrelevant because it is another subject altogether!
In fact Ms Raccah’s mentioning of these issues makes me even more suspicious of her claims and it is beginning to be clear that this is nothing less than a smoke screen statement aimed at justifying high prices and the sympathy of government when they are battling pirating.
Let’s hear form someone in the industry come back with actual costs and actual steps that involve significant costs that, spread over 10,000 sales, justifies the current pricing of eBooks.
I disagree with some of Howard’s statements. I do not believe that it takes merely one hour to convert a book to ebook format. I think it takes quite a bit longer, depending on the quality of the underlying computer text file. Furthermore, it is VERY necessary to closely proofread each form of ebook for formatting issues (spacing, improper symbols, etc, let alone typos.)
It is also NOT instantaneous to prepare correct metadata- as the publishers know because they keep screwing it up. And, again, each different format (and there are more than two- azw and epub) requires it be done each time.
I do agree with his larger point that this is a smokescreen to justify higher than necessary ebook prices, and I am NOT buying “80 steps” in preparing ebooks. But stating that it takes virtually no time and is all automated, Howard, is just wrong.
It probably does take them more time right now: ebooks are still pretty new to publishers, and they haven’t optimized the process, nor do they necessarily have the right expertise yet to optimize the process. It is a different world than print publishing, and their processes are geared towards print publishing.
However, that doesn’t mean that ebook publishing has to take more time or money, just that print publishers may not be the right entities to do it efficiently.
Richard you mention proofreading. Are you saying that proofreading did not have to be done for paper books ? I think this is not an additional step at all and proper editing and proofreading would have been done for printing anyway.
A quick software script and a thousand files could be converted in an hour.
I find it quite incredible that you believe it will take more than an hour to complete the metadata information, and incompetence is no proof of anything.
When it comes to metadata, i’ve quite happily been using the defaults coming back from Calibre. Yes filling that information in manually would take a bit of time, but i’d have to agree that one hour on the outside should be more then adequate.
File format doesn’t appear to be in regards to converting between formats, as much as the publisher spending time&money deciding which version of DRM they wish to use.
So other then to say it costs us a lot more so we need to charge more, it doesn’t really provide any other information.
To paraphrase Will Rogers, “I’ve never metadata I didn’t like.”
(Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)
Yes Chris – and how much is a lot ? an afternoon work for a single eBook let’s say, to be extraordinarily generous ? let’s say it’s even outsourced and charged at, say, 200 dollars ?
200 dollars for one book spread over 5,000 copies ? That’s 4 cents each for formats and meta data.
I guess that just leaves 78 more steps ……….. LOL
Editorial processing makes a book different from a manuscript. Screen books many require more access implementation and print more physical manufacture, but conversion of raw manuscript to retail product is the fundamental service. Editors of combination print and electronic publications have noticed inefficiency as the two formats tend to germinate two, stand alone but redundant, infrastructures. The goal is an integrated product, title by title, that can be sold twice to each market for screen or print. There is little incentive not to sell a given product to two different markets.
@Howard to answer your question, about 30-50 US cents per page to tidy up an EPUB from a reasonably well output InDesign source. Another few cents per page to output the EPUB to AZW. Then a big fat first-world hourly rate to QC the file so that one doesn’t end up with a big pile of digital shit.
Responsible publishers will continuously monitor the accuracy and performance of their metadata, and your proposition that metadata is a static cost is questionable.
Also, publishers would be irresponsible to neglect app development as part of their product mix. One of the challenges facing publishers is that it is no longer acceptable to release an EPUB version of a book and claim that a digital strategy.
Dominique is wrong on some counts, as are you. It’s a lazy Friday. Go grab a beer and relax.
I must be missing something – why does a publisher need to develop apps? Certainly not for the Kindle, iPad, Nook, iPhone, Kobo, et al.
I’ve taken a stab at reformatting a poorly formatted Guttenberg book – it wasn’t rocket science but it was just straight text. Text is relatively easy to work with but throw in some graphics or tables…? How about special ASCII characters? Table of contents? Table of figures? Superscripts? Footnotes? Index? It isn’t as trivial as some make it sound.
As for the once-you’ve-done-one idea (MOBI = EPUB = whatever) I’ve worked with translation software and it usually gets you 95% of the way to the finish. It’s not like you just run it through a script blindly and send it out the door without looking at it.
All that said, I still roll my eyes at the “80 new steps” remark.