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Originally Posted by bill_mchale
Well lets keep in mind that most publishers are rather inefficient in comparison to what would be tolerated in most industries. A lot of books probably either never sell enough to cover their costs or just break even. Publishers rely on the best seller and reliable midlist authors (Though at least in some genres, like sci-fi, the midlist is getting eaten by media based fiction) for their profits. Now mind you some of these losses are necessary. Until you take a chance at an author, there is no way of knowing if he will sell. That being said though, the costs for these other books have to be recouped somehow... hence the rather high prices on books as compared to their actual cost of production, regardless of what format is involved... except maybe mass market paperbacks.
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That doesn't change the fact that price should scale with cost, and the profit remains the same. If costs go down, then the price should go down, and the Publisher can still generate the same amount of profit to recoup their costs.
There's no reason they need to be making (significantly) higher profits on eBooks, other than greed.