In the UK the Office of Fair Trading has begun an enquiry into the ebook agency model, to determine if it is anti-competitive and unlawful.
In them meantime, here is an excerpt from an interesting article
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/new...n-ebook-prices
'Many ebooks currently cost the same or more than their paper counterpart. Best seller The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes costs £5 for the paperback version and £5.99 for the Kindle on Amazon.
However, publishers claim there is a substantial cost associated with the production of ebooks.
A spokeswoman from the Publishers Association, a trade body for publishers, says: "Overall costs of producing ebooks are very similar to the cost of producing paper books, there's just an assumption ebooks are cheap.
"This would include costs for encoding, formatting, rights management, software management and secure archiving." '
Encoding .... software management ... Believe all that and you'll believe anything ...