Quote:
Originally Posted by Tectonic
The reason is actually quite simple. Book readers have a finite amount of time to read and they have a limited amount of money to spend on books each month.
Let's say for example that $50 is the most you will spend on books every month because this is what you can afford. Let's also say that the quickest you can read books, given your busy schedule, is 10 per month. At $10 per book on average, you'll only be able to read 5 books a month because you just don't have the money to buy more. Then at $3 a book you could only hope to read 10 books anyways so this translates to $30 per month for the retailer. However, you might decide to spend your budget on books anyways since books are cheap and you'll read them next month. Either way, the maximum you'll spend is $50.
Giant retailers like Amazon have amazing databases with exact figures on how many books their customers buy in a given time period. One way or another they'll get their $50/month from you but given a choice, they would much rather maximize profits on that $50. Even with low costs, it's more profitable to sell 5 books for $50 than it is to sell 10 for the same price.
So in the end they have no good reason to lower their price on ebooks. Not yet anyways. Even if they did lower their price to say, $0.50 a book, you might splurge and buy 100 books but after that you probably wouldn't buy anything for quite some time.
Now the question: what would be a good reason for them to lower their prices?
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Your post requires price fixing of some sort to make sense for sellers.
As soon as there is a source for quality books people enjoy in their genre outside that price range, then your point collapses in its totality.