Amazon is losing $50 on each Kindle Fire it sells! No, wait—it’s only losing $10! No, wait—it’s making $50 on each device! No, wait—it’s actually losing $2.70! That last is the latest word from IHS’s iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service, which has ostensibly priced each component plus manufacturing costs and come up with a total of $201.70 for the $199 device. Does anyone even believe these estimates anymore? It would be interesting to compare the various different teardowns on a spreadsheet and see how each one priced each component. (I’d do it myself, but I don’t have time right...

Is Amazon really losing money on every Fire it sells? We mentioned an estimate putting the cost of its hardware at $250. Since then, I noticed another estimate putting it at $210, meaning a significantly smaller loss. Now, Light Reading suggests that the cost of the components of a Kindle Fire might be closer to $150, meaning Amazon can sell it at $199 and make a $49 profit. Amazon cut costs on the hardware with its smaller screen size, by not including cameras or a mic, and by including half as much storage as the...

Ebooknewser has an interview with Mark Coker of Smashwords in which he talks about some of the distribution deals Smashwords has in place, and his predictions for the future. He discusses agency pricing, and whether printing costs should come out of e-book pricing. The interview has a pretty good basic explanation of what agency pricing is for someone who has been living under a rock for the last year or so and doesn’t understand it, and it includes an interesting point that Coker, sadly, doesn’t elaborate on in the rest of the review. Of...

Given that Baen is frequently used as a counter-example whenever the matter of printing costs making up a small fraction a a hardcover’s total cost comes up, I thought it would be a good idea to hear from Baen about how it is able to keep its prices so low. Consequently, I arranged this e-mail interview with Toni Weisskopf, Baen’s publisher. Weisskopf has many interesting things to say about Baen’s overall strategy, pricing, and the question of e-books “cannibalizing” printed books. The interview begins below the jump. (Links added by me.) Many voices in the publishing...