Off topic: What are the final costs of a book and what is the share? (i.e. printing, authors cut, publisher’s cut)?
Buying books really hurts my back-pocket (the last book cost me $140+ dollars – and it is a lot more expensive if you do the currency conversation). What is sad is that when I move to another country I will not be able to move all my books. If there is a good e-book reader and books are well-priced (e.g. $30-40 directly to the author) it would feel a lot less painful.
I don't know the costs because I'm not a publisher but.. I think my book has an RRP of $40. Most places sell it for less than that. Amazon, for example, sell it for $26.
According to my royalty documents, my publisher gets about $18 per copy and I get between 10% and 20% of that depending on how many copies I sell. The 20% rate only kicks in after about 25,000 copies or so and few programming books do that well (my first edition sold just under 10,000), so effectively I get around $1.80-$2.50 a copy.
Buying books really hurts my back-pocket (the last book cost me $140+ dollars – and it is a lot more expensive if you do the currency conversation). What is sad is that when I move to another country I will not be able to move all my books. If there is a good e-book reader and books are well-priced (e.g. $30-40 directly to the author) it would feel a lot less painful.