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Interesting topic folks... very interesting. Maybe it should be summarised as "What's a reasonable profit for an eBook?"
The OP is generally right - the cost of "making" eBooks post production is effectively zero, maybe 5c/download if you're living in a country where your server hosting charges per MB and you're amortising things like server depreciation and electricity costs into it all.
Personally, I think that an eBook should sell for effectively the profit margin that your printed books should sell for, so if you're working at about $7 USD per printed book, then go for that on the eBook as well.
If you consider it takes 6 months to a year to produce a fairly typical 350~400 page novel at reasonable wages (let's say $30,000/yr), add in the cost of editing, marketing you'll be somewhere between $20,000~$35,000 for a book. At $10 profit that's 2000~3500 books to sell for a break-even, or at $5 it's 4000~7000 copies!
I admire those people who sell their eBooks for $0.99 each, I can only imagine they've done it on the side and are releasing it more as a novelty rather than anything else.
In summary - while it costs nearly nothing to 'produce' a single copy of an eBook, there's all the pre-production work that has to be paid out first.
Paul.
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