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What's being suggested here should be the default, in my opinion, not the exception.
No media costs. That's the thing about eBooks.
Now its been explained ad naseum that eBooks still cost so much because you are paying for a lot of other things besides media cost. You are paying for royalties. For typesetting. For editing. For someone to shoot some stupid commercial where James Patterson can pretend he's an actor. Stuff like that.
But those costs aren't increased in ANY way if someone is given both a physical and an e-copy. They remain the same.
This would, I think, only help the sales of physical books, I think, and be good P.R. as well. Of course some number crunchers are going to agonize over the potential lost revenue of selling the SAME product in different media and making more money, but realistically that doesn't happen that often.
Disney, of all companies, has surprisingly set the precedent here just as much as the likes of Baen or O'Reilly. When you buy a Disney Blueray disk these days you get... a digital copy (a computer playable file) as a bonus feature. Its the same principle.
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