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I recently read that less than 10% of published authors ever see any royalties or monetary gain from their books. Indeed, it is not uncommon for authors to have to pay significant printing fees for having a publisher accept their work. I know that I, as an academic, have never seen anything in the way of a check for my many publications (admittedly mostly articles). Right now book pricing is dictated largely by the business/corporate needs of the publishing houses themselves, and what it costs for them to maintain a profit. Here too most publishing houses are really quite modest affairs, with only a handful of employees (calling them a "house" has more than a grain of truth here!).
I think these are all signs of a dysfunctional industry running on its last legs. Ebooks are a way to address the many problems in book publishing, but a new, truly viable, ebook industry has yet to emerge. At the moment we are experiencing a rather primitive cloning of traditional publishing practices onto an emerging ebook industry, which is why we are seeing such wild variations in pricing. Geez, I just checked cyberread, and the book I am interested in costs $57 there, while Barnes & Noble has it for $9.99!
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