Let’s look at Peachpit. Now, I still really like Peachpit. It’s filled with very smart and clever people who are stuck in a dying system. Remember, just because I got only 15 percent of the book sales does not mean that Peachpit makes 85 percent. That money is like the great catch in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. It’s nibbled away by the book binder, lawyers, the guy that drives the truck to Borders (er, Barnes & Noble) the printing company, the book stores and all the other little people required to physically produce a book and get it into the hands of the reader. No one is getting rich off these things. In fact, everyone involved with the old book business is just barely scraping by with profit margins that’ll make your Adam’s apple shake up and down like Eve’s eyebrows.So I started FlatBooks and now we operate at an 80 percent profit margin.
thenewgreen: I'm in a great pub called Daines in Durham NC (great veggie burger) and was just talking with the gal next to me about her Kindle. She both loves it and hates it. She loves the ease of it and the practicality but she hates that she still has to pay as much or more for a physical book.All of the new digital media companies need to recognize that the days of paying 10$ or more for product is gone. (this is why we steal) A digital album should be between 3-5$. I think the Louis CK experiment was a telling one: http://hubski.com/pub?id=11797