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So now you've changed it to "new release books"?
It doesn't matter. The bottom line is still total sales: If a publisher can sell 100 books for $20 or 500 books for $10 or 5,000 books for $5, everybody but the publishers (who have formed a combination in restraint of trade) and their supporters (astroturfing surprises us at this point?) can see where their money lies. The fact that they'd rather leave money on the table than change their obsolete business model, or force through laws saying all cars must carry buggy whips, doesn't change that.
Look at Baen: If you want an unproofed galley so you can read a book months before anyone else does, you buy the advance reader copy. If you want an ebook the day the hardcover comes out, you buy the regular ebook. If you want to read the backlist, there's the Baen Free Library. Interestingly enough, Baen has gone from an also-ran to, among other things, the leading publisher of hardcover SF. Despite, I might note, selling cheap, DRM-free, multi-format ebooks. There just might be something to this whole "sell what the market wants to buy" thing, instead of "make the market buy what you want to sell."
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