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Let me just put out a further few thoughts on costs versus price.
I guess the reason "it should be priced less because it costs less" always strikes me as odd is because it's so often flouted elsewhere. Diap gave the example of a loaf of bread. I'd argue most consumers don't know or care about the costs of making what they buy. They do have an idea of what it's worth. But most people will realise that the price difference between a luxury sports car and an everyday hatchback is more than the costs of manufacture. Many of these would happily buy one if they had the disposable income. My house would cost about 50% more if you picked it up and plonked it down 5 miles down the road - because good schools, better amenities and a perceived 'better' area all have value. I don't know anyone who factors in cost of construction into a house-buying purchase.
Those are fairly specialised examples but that's only to demonstrate the point. I think it's true of everyday items. I don't think we generally judge how much something should be in price by its costs - because we don't know and even for big ticket items don't often try to find out - instead we get our sense of what a "fair" price is based on what similar items go for. And when items are similar but there's an intangible value difference - like with the house or car - then those can sway us to pay more for something that costs the same or even less.
I suspect one of the reasons this comes up for ebooks is that we're in a transition phase. Ebooks are new and so the price question is raised more readily. We don't have the same sense of what the price should be because they haven't been around so long. I think that will settle. People will decide what they're happy to pay and the market will, roughly, come to reflect that. Most people I suspect will get used to paying a certain price for ebooks without mentally comparing it to a paper book.
I understand the principle argument and I'm not trying to convince anyone to change their practices I'm just trying to offer a different perspective. Because whenever this topic comes it there's always an emphasis on a) what it costs to make and b) what you can't do with it, but the fact that there are things you can do with ebooks you can't with paper books and the fact that cost is only vaguely related to buying decisions for most people - never seems to get a mention.
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