Originally Posted by BWinmill
I love how the publishers say that printing is a fraction of the cost of the book, but won't say what that fraction is.
10% is the figure one publisher gave for the cost of printing. But distribution would be a lot higher than that. Wholesale distributors typically want 60% off the cover price so that there is enough margin left for retailers to take their cut when they buy them from the distributor. Whereas with ebooks the distributor cut (for Amazon and Apple at least, don't know about anywhere else) is 30%.
So, a £10 real book minus £1 printing, minus £6 distributor cut = £3 net profit.
And a £10 ebook minus £0 printing, minus £3 distributor cut = £7 net profit.