[DiapDealer]

While I agree that once the ebook is created, there are very minimal costs from that point on. But I'm here to tell you that getting the book into a quality ebook format isn't the "click/poof!" that many of you guys and gals seem to think it is. There is no commonly shared source document to rule them all (though I certainly hope there will be some day).

No, someone is being payed to take the original print layout's electronic version (assuming it's a newer book and has an electronic version) and converting it to HTML. And depending on what that original electronic document is, that process can be anything but a walk in the park (never mind that corrections are being made to the original throughout this entire conversion process that will have to be manually propagated to the new ebook version). Many of those print layout electronic versions are proprietary, mostly "one-way" or "final destination" formats.

And if you've ever witnessed, first-hand, the differences between a shoddily produced (click/poof!) ebook and a quality-produced ebook ... then you're seeing the evidence of "costs" associated with the production of ebooks. Whether or not you feel those costs are justified or completely neglible are, of course, an altogether different and unrelated topic than whether or not there are costs.

So just like not believing the "hype" from publishers concerning the costs associated with ebooks, you may also want to take with a grain of salt, the claims of industry outsiders that ebooks just magically appear on online retailers websites with absolutely no intervention by a human that would like to earn some money for his/her efforts.

Someday, there might be one source from which all formats (physical and electronic) flow in some magical, button-pushy, efficient workflow, but we just ain't there yet.