#OED
Frank
Frank & Lisa:
I am getting the point now. I have gotten so used to paying $10 to
$25 for high quality paperbacks, and $45 to $75 for good hardbound books,
and even more for books with good quality reproductions of artwork, that I
had assumed that it cost a lot of money to print and ship the things.
Mac-World had a article a month or two ago about the cost of producing
CD-ROMS. Having gotten used to paying $9 to $17 for recorded music on CD,
and looked at the cost of CD-ROM disks, I was shocked to find out that once
a master recording is produced, and a master CD is produced, (for about
$1,000,) the individual CD's are stamped out and put in those little
plastic boxes with the printed inserts for under $2 each! And that is with
a production run as small as 1000 CD's! When you think of a hit album on
CD, that sells a million copies at $15 each, you are thinking of 13 million
greenbacks to spread around.
Even a classical recording, something obscure, say, the Amsterdam
Guitar trio, who might sell 20,000 copies of their latest, (and truly
sublime) transcription of the Brandenburg Concertos. If they retail at $14
each, you are talking sales of $239,000 above production costs. So if the
retailers take half, you still have $119.500 to distribute the thing, and
pay yourself. There be money in those silver discs.,