Sorry for the long post... maybe I should release it in mobi format
Being a computer tech, I know how easy it is to create and make "something from nothing" in the computer world.
For paper books, get a text scanner that scans the pages of a book one by one or maybe 2 at a time, which converts it into either picture or text format (usually with existing OCR techniques), and from there a simple program, which even if it does not exist, can easily be programmed and created to convert that text into any format the ebook company wishes to use.
My best explanation for the less technical people: it is the equivalent of using a scanner into photoshop that scans each page with OCR to convert it to text, then use batch scripts to convert the entire deal into a single text file, then converted into whatever format by calibre. At a commercial level, it is much more simplistic than this, the higher end commercial scanners can convert the entire book into a single project with their software as it scans, and then converted once it is done.
From start to finish, the cost per ebook
if converted from paper, is around $3-5 per book.
For newer books in the past 15 years, if the original book or author submitted it via digital format like DOC, TXT, RTF, PDF or something from a computer, it would cost less than 25 cents per ebook.
Of course some publishers or authors are requiring some ungodly amount of royalties per copy which is why some ebooks cost $30, and others cost $3.
So what we are seeing is several things here, most of which we have seen before and will see again:
1) Resistance to the ebook formats by various people in the publishing industry. Using scare tactics and generalities to scare people into continuing to purchase paper based books.
They did the same thing when CD music started getting popular and people were creating ripping programs to mp3. They tried to scare people into continued purchases of physical media like CDs or cassettes.
The same thing is happening with movies right now as well. As internet speed and computer speeds increases, it is easier to make personal backups of your collection, which they use scare tactics of pirates, DRM and legal reasoning to fight places like Netflix and Blockbuster and other online streaming sources.
2) They use cherry picked data and numbers to make it appear that they are making little to no money on any ebooks.
One company is showing numbers that just in the first 9 months of 2010, there has been $304.6 Million in sales, compared to the entire year of 2009 saw $164.8 million, there is OBVIOUSLY major profits being seen now.
B&N stated it had seen a 59% increase of sales for the entire company, a majority of that by digital media. Barnes & Noble comparable instore sales decreased by 3.3%. By comparison, print books still make up the vast majority of the industry's revenues--around $23 billion in 2009, but that number is in decline, while ebook sales increase by over 200% per year.
Another company uses different sets of numbers completely which adds to the confusion. Their numbers state US spending on e-books is expected to total $966 million this year, up from $301 million dollars last year.
A Forrester survey of e-book readers found that 35 percent read e-books on a laptop computer, 32 percent on Amazon's Kindle, 15 percent on Apple's iPhone, 12 percent on a Sony e-reader and 10 percent on a netbook computer.
First one I mentioned: International Digital Publishing Forum in conjunction with the Association of American Publishers (AAP). These are insiders using cherry picked numbers.
2009: $164.8 Million in US sales
2010: $204.6 Million in sales through Oct 2010
Second one I mentioned: Forrester Research Inc. that deals with independent and peer verified data.
2009: $301 Mil
2010: predicts $966 Mil. for the year