From: Paul DuBois <paul@...>
Date: 2003-02-01T08:53:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby Books -- A Question

>  > "Retail book publishers are in trouble. A decade ago, they could
>>  expect a healthy 10% profit margin selling books in bookstores. Now
>>  publishers' profits are less than half that, averaging around 4%.
>>  Their bookstore sales have also dropped in each of the past five
>>  years."
>
>It's hard to understand how the profit margins could be as low as even 10%,
>given the cost of technical books here in Australia.
>
>Most of the O'Reilly books, for example, are currently selling for between
>AUD105 and AUD120.  Only a couple of years ago, the average price was AUD75.
>
>I realise it costs more money than one would imagine to produce a book, but
>unless they're only selling a couple of thousand copies, it's difficult to
>see how they couldn't be making a serious profit at that price.

Read the full article.  It's not the publishers that are getting the profit,
it's the middlemen.

>
>At current prices, I just don't buy anywhere near as many technical books as I
>once did.  I'm happier to spend time finding free resources on the net, like
>tutorials written for CS courses, or asking questions on mailing lists.
>
>Actually, what I'd love to see would be for publishers to make more books
>available on CD-ROM, to save on the printing costs, passing those savings on
>to the reader.
>
>While I like reading paper documents, I'd actually prefer to print out a
>couple of chapters at a time, to carry with me.  For reference purposes, a
>well designed CD-ROM is a much better tool.
>
>I'm sure, of course, that I don't fit into the average publisher's demographic
>:-).