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@X: Publishing isn't terribly profitable, so I'm not sure its fair to accuse publishers of profiteering. And Amazon is, arguably, abusing its quasi-monopoly position with regards to publishers. Publishers have been struggling for a while, and while this is partly their fault due to too much consolidation (Publishing seems to work best, and be most profitable, at a fairly small scale - and the owners of publishers expect ludicrous returns, and have geared up on debt accordingly) and short term thinking, there still are costs and benefits associated with publishing. They're not like the music industry,
But selling ebooks at hardback prices is stupid. A more sensible approach would be to gradually reduce prices. Those who can't wait and have to the book now would pay more (just as they now buy hardbacks), while the backlist would become far cheaper than current books (which is reasonable, as there'd be no cost to keeping them in print, and the production costs would either have been met, or are never going to be met anyway). Most of the money on books is made in the first couple of years and this should work. And there would be new possibilities for selling short stories, and perhaps charging slightly more for books customised to particular needs (large print for a [Brand] [Model] whatever) and even renting books out.
And while revenues might go down due to things like piracy, costs are also going to fall significantly also. And I suspect the bigger problem with piracy will not be piracy, but genuinely free content. Piracy may well be the least of it.
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