[GA Russell]

I come at this from a different perspective. The price of books has risen for years. The only explanation I ever saw was that the price of paper keeps rising.

I don't know the ins and outs of the publishing business, and in fact I don't care about those details. It looks to me like the publishers have not controlled costs for decades.

I remember when I was a boy in 1958, paperbacks such as Perry Mason novels cost 35 cents. (I'm speaking of what are today called mass market paperbacks.)

Well, we've had a lot of inflation in fifty years. A candy bar that cost a nickel then costs 50 cents today. (Today's candy bars are a little bit bigger, but I think they have less chocolate. But that's another issue!). So let's assume we have had inflation of ten times.

Of course, in every book some of the value is the content, and some of it is the physical package. I'm willing to allocate most of the 1958 35 cents to the content.

And to keep it simple, I am willing to say that an eBook file is 100% content.

So the paperback of today should cost $3.50. If a paperback costs $7.99 today, that difference should be allocated entirely to the cost of paper and delivery, not the content.

Furthermore, just as the 35 cent paperback's value was not entirely content, neither should all of the $3.50 in 2010 dollars be allocated to content.

This is all to say that I feel that a price of about $3.00 for a backlist eBook is reasonable, and is consistent with the price of books fifty years ago. A price higher than that reflects price gouging in my opinion.

I understand that the Austrians consider price gouging to be merely the market at work, but publishers are making a moral claim that it is wrong for people to download eBooks without paying for them. It is my view, however, that a price gouger cannot rely upon a call for others to act morally.

US and British Commonwealth law have what is called The Court of Equity. There is an old saying, He who comes to The Court of Equity must have clean hands.

So in sum, I say that publishers that charge what they are charging ($6-10) for eBooks of backlist titles have unclean hands. The public has no moral duty to price gougers.