CompuServe Messages

Frank: Certainly you are right about the production costs. In fact, it might be interesting to look at the comparison of where dollars go in the book-making process vs CDROM-making process. Publishers are accustommed to paying authors very little, and spending a lot on actually making the book. In the electronic environment there's a switch: Much more time and effort and cost must go into the factors you describe (and even more so in a multimedia product), while the cost of actually making the saleable commodity has gone way down (not counting packaging, documentation etc). This may be one reason why the traditional book publishers have been relatively slow to embrace electronic delivery. They have to overcome those models and traditions. While wily entrepreneurs have moved in to learn the business from scratch, and are not threatened by the prospects of a drastic change throughout a large publishing organization. Rich