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Costs have nothing to do with it, of course. The publisher is charging what it thinks the market will bear. And within the ethermarket, where prices can be altered in a nanosecond, they can keep capturing those who will pay the top (current) price, and then ratchet it down, capturing top buck at each level.
My own reaction to all this? When Random House joined the evil five, it was a black day. I look at what must be at least 50 ebooks purchased at a (no longer possible) discount, add in the two hundred or so unread DTBs around the house, remember the elibrary option plus undiscovered public domain goodies, and I'm out. I can last for at least two years burning off my own inventory. This isn't a holy war, I'll cave on the odd purchase, but essentially I'm done, until sanity returns. eReading is convenient, more so than DTBs, but since I always have a few books going it's not a dealbreaker. I can read the DTBs at home and the ebooks on the move.
Because: it is insulting to charge less for an item with an inherent value (can be resold, lent, donated) for one with none. Do they think ereaders are idiots? Or that our convenience is worth such a premium to us that their reduced costs redound entirely to the seller? Buh-bye, guys. Ultimately books are fungible and there are a lot of them out there.
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