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If I may jump in here -- the discussion about publisher profits on ebooks needs to also take author royalties into consideration. The author gets only a small fraction of the cover price of the first sale of a book. As the industry changes and adapts to new technology, that will have to be revisited. Traditionally the publisher gets the lion's share because they bear the brunt of the costs (production, materials, transport). Once those things go away -- and eventually they all will in favor of electronic formats -- there's an argument for authors getting a bigger percentage.
Publishers claiming they need to charge the same amount for an ebook -- that's what they would LIKE to be able to do, of course. The more profit, the better. They'd like to charge full cover price for every book, no matter who sells it. We all know this doesn't happen.
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