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In reality, those of us who used to buy mass market paperbacks matter. We didn't buy hard covers or trade paperbacks, and waited for the book to come out at the lower price point. If the publishers choose to eventually drop the ebook price to MMPB prices (or less, since I can get 10% off of any MMPB at B&N's website), we will buy. If not, we'll just buy something else, or not at all, and we'll tighten the publishers' margins even further. And if the publishers were smart, they'd price their ebook backlist even cheaper after the book's been out for a long time to compete with the used books. Sure, they're never going to compete with the garage sale down the block, but they could compete with Half Price Books and the book closeout chains, and the rest of the used book stores. Even the publisher CEOs admit that the pricing is not about cost, but timeliness of access, with the brand new books having a price premium for being timely.
The real problem with ebooks is that they can stay in print indefinitely without cost to the publisher, and so they are competition to all the new works. How do you price the old books so they don't cannibalize the new works, but maximum the total revenue for each book? The publishers surely don't know, and neither do I.
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