Why do you think you could print a 400 page full-color book for $5 and make a profit, especially at lowest volumes/print on demand? That stuff isn't just expensive because printing companies are evil.
I discovered that the economics of having things printed are surprising. It costs about the same to print one copy as it does to print a thousand copies. Nearly all the expense is in the setup, the marginal cost of paper is pretty small.
The trick is to correctly guess how many you'll need.
> it's probably just me not being accustomed to the book selling ripoff, but still feels like a monumental, epic-level ripoff.
It's not just Amazon. I have friends who have published books with traditional publishers as well and the author's margin is razor thin vs the book price.
Well, there it is. Even after you said that I had to spend some good time clicking through those weird internal "show hidden text" links to find it. I can't believe color costs so much more--clearly he should have just made it B&W. People buy such things for information more than pictures (I think).
Color is lower volume, given that many books are text-only or just some line graphics, and do not need color. It's also more complex to print (I've seen some surprising failures from cheap color printing in the occasional project I've helped with) and thus also possibly has a higher rate of complaints. And since they do the same rate for everyone there's compensation for overly expensive projects in there too - if you have b/w with some color elements you pay the same rate as someone ordering full-page, full-color graphics.
With more flexible printers, it's common to arrange pages and images inside the book so only some sheets are expensively printed in color, but Amazon doesn't appear to be set up to offer that. With offset-printing, there's also things like using only one additional color instead of full CMY, or printing the color elements for all language editions the same and only varying the (black) text to reduce costs.
You can do two editions, a color and a black and white edition. I buy a Game and Puzzle Design Journal that offers exactly that, through Lulu: http://gapdjournal.com/issues/. I still pay the extra for the color version because I think it's better, but for those who don't care as much, they can pay less and get it cheaper that way.
As a price comparison, their most recent edition is a compilation of six issues at 524 pages. The black and white edition is 30 euros and the color edition is 85 euros, so a 55 euro difference between the two editions, of the same content.
Mainly less freedom on pricing. But even then there are some territories where you're going to get 35% after bandwidth costs are deducted [0]. Strangely, from what I've seen, KDP appears agnostic on DRM and gives you the choice.
why isn't there a competitor that takes a lower percentage? say 10% for both.
are the economics of book selling so atrocious for the authors in general? how can one accept .77ct profit on $54 of sale?
it's probably just me not being accustomed to the book selling ripoff, but still feels like a monumental, epic-level ripoff.