GalleyCat puts the case for galleys as ebooks
By Paul Biba
The title says it all. Here’s an excerpt. Any publishers here? If so, go over and read the whole thing.
Let’s face it, all the major publishers are pretty much sending their galleys out to the same reviewers year after year. That’s why, if the reviewers’ offices are anything like mine, they have a good stack of 100-150 books coming in every week (no exaggeration) from every major, mini-major and independent publisher.
This is where the “saving the $1.5 million a year” comes in to play. If all the publishers are sending their galleys to the same 1000 reviewers, why don’t they send everyone an eReader.
“But (gasp) Jeff, that would cost too much money!”
Would it? Would it, really?
Let’s examine the costs:1000 reviewers
x $3/galley
x $1/ U.P.S. mailing cost
x 375 titles/year
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$1.5 million /yearThat’s $1.5 million a year the average major publisher is spending printing and mailing out to the same 1000 reviewers every year.
Now, let’s examine how much it would cost to mail each reviewer all a Kindle, including shipping costs.
1000 reviewers
x $400 /Kindle
x $0 / galley
x $0 / U.P.S. galley mailing costs
x 375 titles/year
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$400,000That’s $400,000 the first year and not one penny more year after year
April 14th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Epic Fail. Amazon != EBOOKS. No mention of any other e-book reading device, particularly those which are less expensive *koffsonykoff*
April 15th, 2009 at 7:58 am
I think I’d give Gallycat the benefit of the doubt there and assume they just used the Kindle as an example. They did mention “eReader” generically also. Clearly sending out whichever reader supports the most formats would be best.
I do however think that there would be costs beyond the $400,000. It costs a fair bit to run servers that would distribute the eBooks. Still, a lot less than 1.5 mil.
I’d guess no publisher wants to be the one who spends the 400k that saves all the other publishers 1.5 mil a year, not when all the reviewers will have eReaders they buy themselves in a couple of years anyway. It’s about relative profit, not absolute profit