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There is no price justification for the hardcover. It's a matter of economics. Price discrimination is what companies do (legally) when they own a monopoly. Publishers own a monopoly for Book A (Let's use Freakonomics). Only one publisher has the republication rights to Freakonomics. For those who CAN'T WAIT TO READ IT, the price is set higher because those purchasers are willing and able to pay the higher price. For some, they would like to read it and will wait until the paperback release. Still others are interested in reading but will either wait to get it at the library or buy it used at a still lower price. It's argued that in a perfect market economy, the price each consumer would pay for a widget would be different depending on each consumer's ability and willingness to pay.
Ebook pricing, imo, is engaged in a bit of price discrimination. You want a book in a certain format? Then you will have to pay for that.
Sony is buying the books from the publishers and reselling them to us (they are the wholesalers, we are the retail customers). They get them at a certain price which for big box stores is 40% off the list. From there they determine what discount they want to give. Let's say that they recognize that they make more money selling hardware devices (as is true with the IPOD/ITUNES business model), then they sell the books at a slight increase over their costs. Kind of a loss leader sort of deal. I.e., sell something at a loss to get people into the store to buy more. So books would be the loss leader and the "more" would be the Sony Reader.
If they want to make a profit off the bookstore in addition to the hardware devices, they sell at the same price that is generally available in the ebook market or greater, depending on the demand for their proprietary ebooks over some other ebook format.
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