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I think that BBusyBookworms is right that the ebook division of many publishers is so small as to be totally overlooked in the larger marketing decisions which include pricing issues. And I would be willing to bet that the person assigned to run whatever ebook division many publishers have is sent there as a punishment rather than as a promotion, and has no real incentive to bully their division into the formidable corporate player it could (and should!) be.
When people do decide NOT to buy a book because of price for the ebook version, please be sure to notify the publisher of that decision and how their reluctance to provide the essentially expense-less ebook version at a reasonable price is costing them additional sales, and encourage them to look more closely at the finances of the ebook marketplace and the huge potential for profit (it's practically ALL profit after the initial fairly easy and cheap transformation from the print-books' electronic files to ebook format).
Amazon can charge so much less because they simply say to publishers "We sell a kagilliion of your print books, and we would like to charge only $x.xx for the ebook version. If we can't we simply won't sell your print books." THAT sort of persuasion, having the world's largest bookseller potentially refuse to sell any of your books, works well.
Sony, on the other hand, is more like a weak young child in an orphanage walking up timidly to the fearful and cruel headmaster and saying "please, sir, may I have some more?" when they negotiate with a publisher.
Perhaps they'll take a page from their CD division and their DVD division and simply buy a few publishers so they can control the content and the pricing!
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