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My wife loves the In Death series. The latest book Secrets in Death which is due out 2017-Sep-05 is priced at $15.99Cdn for ebook (Amazon.ca and Kobo CA) while the paperback is priced at $10.99 (marked down at Amazon to $9.68Cdn, Chapters-Indigo to $9.78Cdn).
This is fairly typical of the pricing I see for popular new releases -- gouge those ebook reading suckers -- a quick check shows that 7 of the last 9 books my wife purchased were priced at $4 to $9Cdn. over the price of the mass market paperback.
At least at Baen, they drop the price of their ebooks when the paperback is released and the ebooks prices are lower than the paperback to start with. They are up front about the "you want it first" tax.
I have difficulty understanding how the producer of an ebook which does not require printing, binding, shipping, handling returns, etc. is able to justify pricing an ebook at a higher price than a paperback version. I understand that ebooks share the editing, cover design, and other costs of print books and there is some cost for formatting of the ebook but expecting me to believe that the cost of formatting an ebook is that much more than the life cycle cost of a mass market paperback? I've believed as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast but this outstrips my ability to suspend my reality checker.
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