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I think what that number misses is promotional costs, distributions costs, warehousing costs. My understanding is that publishers make money on only a few books. Most books have print runs of 50% greater than their expected sell through in order to get the expected sell through. I suspect some of the pricing is made to absorb the loss of the returns and the non sold books.
(These numbers are for romance books which have much higher sell through numbers)
I.e., a print run for Julia Quinn's last romance book was purportedly 800,000. Her sell through numbers (or books actually sold) was approximately half that. Why the difference? Because in order to reach the 50% sell through, there has to be enough stock sent around the country. So print books (v digital books) have a much lower margins.
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