With all this talk of ebook "piracy" it's pretty interesting to read about some of the nitty-gritty of actual book counterfeiting, the kind that results in high-quality copies of physical books that are easily mistaken for the authorized items:
After numerous calls to Kinkos and awkward conversations with vanity presses and POD publishers (kids, and adults, should not try this at home), The Book Standard staffers determined that a potential Potter pirate would have to team up with a particularly unscrupulous–or clueless–printer in order to produce a significant number of illegal copies of a book. One estimate suggested that 10,000 copies of a book about the expected size of Harry Potter–672 pages–could be printed for less than $30,000, which puts the cost per book at $3.00. Shipping and handling is another matter, but could be figured at 10% of the production cost. Sell each copy at $10, and your criminal entrepreneur is raking in approximately a 200% profit.
(via Make Blog)
