February 18, 2011 at 17:28Real Cost of Publishing under Amazon Kindle
If you've ever downloaded newspaper issues onto your Kindle, you might have noticed how few illustrations there are. The reason is not at all that the illustrations look bad on a screen with 16 gradations of gray (newspapers published two hundred years in a two-color raster, so this is not a problem), but in a completely different way.
The answer is buried in the official terms of use of the Kindle for publishing periodicals. Scroll to the Revenue Share section and you will see an amazing formula
(Price - shipping cost ) × 70%
It would seem, what does the “delivery cost" have to do with it? This is an electronic publication. But it turns out that at the expense of publishers, Amazon pays off the cost of providing free 3G worldwide. For every digital copy sold over 3G, they charge $ 0.15 per megabyte in the United States, 10 pence per megabyte in the UK and $ 0.99 per megabyte in all other countries.
According to Amazon’s calculations, a “typical newspaper” with hundreds of articles and 15-20 illustrations will have a file size between 0.5 and 1 MB. That is, with an average cost of 99 cents per newspaper, the publisher should give Amazon about 10% of its revenue for “delivery” only. And this share will increase even more if the newspaper is sold at a lower price.
For magazines, the situation is even worse. For example, a PC Pro computer magazine with approximately 150 articles and 100 photographs would have to unfasten Amazon 50-60 cents from each issue for “delivery” only. This is more than mailing for regular paper magazines.
If readers expect that the cost of the electronic version of the publication will be lower than the paper version, then they will have to moderate their expectations. The cost of an electronic publication in the Kindle Store is not even set by the publisher, but by Amazon itself. Before starting sales, she sends an email to the publisher with a notification at what price she decided to display the goods. Thus, in some cases, the profit from the sale of the electronic version for the publication may even be lower than from the sale of the paper version (for example, in the UK VAT is paid from electronic sales, but not paid from paper).
So some magazines - for example, The Economist - are more expensive in the Kindle version than subscribing to the paper version, although the latter includes a digital subscription (except for the Kindle). For the British magazine The Economist, which is distributed with a large number of illustrations, a monthly subscription to the Kindle version costs 9.99 pounds. An annual Kindle subscription costs £ 20 more than paper + digital. Of course, this causes a lot of indignant reviews from readers.
It is not surprising that most newspapers and publications choose a less risky option and distribute through the Kindle with a minimum number of illustrations or do not publish the Kindle version at all.
via PC Pro
The answer is buried in the official terms of use of the Kindle for publishing periodicals. Scroll to the Revenue Share section and you will see an amazing formula
(Price - shipping cost ) × 70%
It would seem, what does the “delivery cost" have to do with it? This is an electronic publication. But it turns out that at the expense of publishers, Amazon pays off the cost of providing free 3G worldwide. For every digital copy sold over 3G, they charge $ 0.15 per megabyte in the United States, 10 pence per megabyte in the UK and $ 0.99 per megabyte in all other countries.
According to Amazon’s calculations, a “typical newspaper” with hundreds of articles and 15-20 illustrations will have a file size between 0.5 and 1 MB. That is, with an average cost of 99 cents per newspaper, the publisher should give Amazon about 10% of its revenue for “delivery” only. And this share will increase even more if the newspaper is sold at a lower price.
For magazines, the situation is even worse. For example, a PC Pro computer magazine with approximately 150 articles and 100 photographs would have to unfasten Amazon 50-60 cents from each issue for “delivery” only. This is more than mailing for regular paper magazines.
If readers expect that the cost of the electronic version of the publication will be lower than the paper version, then they will have to moderate their expectations. The cost of an electronic publication in the Kindle Store is not even set by the publisher, but by Amazon itself. Before starting sales, she sends an email to the publisher with a notification at what price she decided to display the goods. Thus, in some cases, the profit from the sale of the electronic version for the publication may even be lower than from the sale of the paper version (for example, in the UK VAT is paid from electronic sales, but not paid from paper).
So some magazines - for example, The Economist - are more expensive in the Kindle version than subscribing to the paper version, although the latter includes a digital subscription (except for the Kindle). For the British magazine The Economist, which is distributed with a large number of illustrations, a monthly subscription to the Kindle version costs 9.99 pounds. An annual Kindle subscription costs £ 20 more than paper + digital. Of course, this causes a lot of indignant reviews from readers.
It is not surprising that most newspapers and publications choose a less risky option and distribute through the Kindle with a minimum number of illustrations or do not publish the Kindle version at all.
via PC Pro