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As Kali Yuga said, Harlequin is not clueless publisher new to ebooks. They are quite established in that area, and have been doing it very well, in my opinion. I've been buying ebooks from them since long before I decided to buy an ereader. Three cents more for a book I don't have to find room for? Worth it, definitely.
Yes, their response was silly. If they had said "converting paper books" instead of "converting text files" I might throw them a point, even if it would still be partially inaccurate. As someone who has converted many text files, I can't cut them any slack on that excuse. But the added value thing - if we were talking about $5, I'd take issue with it, but not for $0.03. Even though I try to stretch my dollars till they break when it comes to books, it's definitely worth at least that much. Yes, I want the ebook version and yes, I'm willing to pay a little bit more for it if I have to and it's in my book budget, especially since Harlequin gives me easy access to all of their imprints via their site. It's a heck of a lot easier than going to a publisher site, finding the newest books from an imprint, then going somewhere else to actually buy the book. I'm willing to pay a little more for that convenience.
To me, Harlequin is to Romance what Baen is to SciFi/Fantasy. The both do this direct-to-consumer thing really, really well. I guess because of that, I'm willing to cut them more slack than I would a different publisher.
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