The True Cost of Publishing On the Amazon Kindle 236
Barence writes "Ever wondered why Kindle newspapers and magazines don't have many photos? PC Pro has done an analysis of the costs of publishing on the Kindle and discovered that Amazon effectively taxes newspapers and magazines for including more images. Amazon applies 'delivery charges' to publishers at the cost of $0.15 per MB/10p per MB. At those prices, PC Pro claims it's cheaper to mail out a physical magazine than have it delivered electronically on the Kindle. What's more, publishers have no control over the price of their newspaper or magazine: Amazon sets the prices itself, leading to huge customer complaints for titles such as The Economist."
Re:Costs (Score:3, Informative)
The printing costs almost nothing. Today, the mailing of a magazine probably costs more than the printing does.
Do not believe that physical printing costs much - it doesn't - and doesn't factor into the prices of books and magazines much at all. It is heavily outweighed by the costs of the editorial staff.
Re:The Real Reason... (Score:2, Informative)
And they draw slowly - an image the size of the screen ( 600x800, I think ) takes well over a second to render. Not that the kindle was meant to show really show pictures, of course, since it's main selling point seems to be the appearance of the text on the page.
I want PARAGRAPH BREAKS and proofreading! (Score:5, Informative)
I bought my first Kindle book last week -- "Selected Stories by Philip K Dick"
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0027MJTNS [amazon.com]
I'm very unhappy with the Kindle experience.
There are typographical errors on 50% of pages (usually missing spaces between punctuation). And most importantly, the Kindle edition simply LACKS those "blank-line paragraph breaks". In the physical copy I can tell that time has jumped forward or we've switched planet by that half an inch of whitespace. But on the Kindle, it all just flows together and I have to slow down, stop, reverse, and figure out that there should have been a break there.
Re:Smallest Violin (Score:4, Informative)
This doesn't apply so much to publishing, but you still have the traditional barriers to entry there: Publishers arn't going to be interested in your distribution system until they consider you a serious contender, which means you need either a ton of money to spend on marketing or the backing of an established and respected player.
Re:Not really a moving narrative (Score:5, Informative)
By the way, the magazines that can be had for less than $18 per year are actually subsidized by advertising. The true cost of printing + mailing a full length (around 100 pages / perfect binding / good paper / good printing) magazine is around $5 - 10 per issue per customer. Add in production/design/content costs, and the actual cost of a single magazine can be anywhere from $20 - 30. If you take a look at the sale prices of unsubsidized (ie magazines with no ads) - you can find that the cheaper magazines use poor quality paper, while the really glossy ones (which are usually high art / high fashion mags) costs around $30 per issue.
Hope this clears up some things.
They can (Score:4, Informative)
Why can't users just connect to their home network at download the content from the publishers' websites?
They can. Nothing is stopping anyone from doing that, in fact on a Kindle or iPad you can load PDF or ePub files on it yourself if you like.
But for the same reason I fly instead of walk to New York, people like to get content through automated feeds and directly on a device wherever they are.
Re:Not really a moving narrative (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody except the "high art" magazines are using good paper these days. You are thinking of an era that has long passed us by. Good paper can be seen with Architectural Digest and a few (very few) others. The rest are using the cheapest paper and cheapest printing techniques possible.
No way does it cost Time $5 to print and deliver a copy. Perfect-bound books can be printed in large quantities for $1.25 each, so I would say Time is probably no more than $0.50 to print and maybe $0.75 to bulk mail it.