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We live in a capitalist economy and that means that, at least in theory, sellers should be able to ask whatever they like for the products they sell. Of course it doesn't have to be related to cost.
However, buyers can refused to buy or go buy from someone who offers it for less. But wait! If the publisher sets the price nobody else can offer it for less. Well, it's mostly capitalism. Just not always.
When I was in college one of my jobs was managing a hardware store and we sold nearly everything at a 100% markup. If it cost us a dollar we sold it for two dollars. A few bulk items had a smaller markup but the vast majority was marked up 100%. Grocery stores, on the other hand, mark their groceries up 15%. Or maybe it was 5%. I never dealt with setting grocery prices so I'm just going by what I was told a long time ago. Grocery stores sell very high volume so they can afford to do that. Restaurants usually mark things up 300%. They have to deal with a lot of waste.
But here's the thing: none of these stores have any legal or moral obligation to mark things up the way they do. They do it because it works. It lets them make money and compete for our business.
I don't believe that's the publisher's motivation at all. Of course they want to make money but competing isn't really much of a factor in ebook prices, at least from what I've seen and read. If they apply a markup to ebooks, cost plus a percentage, ebooks will be cheaper and people will be more likely to buy ebooks and that'll become a bigger part of their business. And little by little they'll be selling a cheaper product and cheaper products mean less profit.
I think the reason for ebook prices is to discourage ebook sales. Do I know this? Not really. But it makes a lot of sense and I've read the same opinion a number of times from people who know more about it than I do and I think it's probably true.
Is that illegal? I doubt it. Is it immoral? I don't really know. They do have the right to charge whatever they want. At the same time they have a plan in place, if I'm right, that discourages progress. Or at least what I would consider progress.
Barry
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