[Acreo Aeneas]

We're overlooking something very important in all this "price war" business: costs vs. profit.

I can understand pricing dead-tree books at $15+ dollars in order to cover the printing costs, paper, and shipping costs. However, I don't see any justification in using the same pricing model for a digital version (aka ebooks). There's no shipping cost, no printing costs, saves trees, and after the 2nd/3rd editing is done, they can just upload the whole slew and sell them at a webstore. Profit is practically 90%+ and publishers have the option of selling directly from their own sites bypassing retailers.

Those webstores don't cost anywhere near as much as printing and shipping a dead-tree book. You can easily run a webstore with a decent support team and a few thousand a year (dedicated box and e-commerce software).

Pricing should reflect costs, not be arbitrary jacked up to justify some publisher's monetary greed because they think they're big, bad, and can get away with it.

If publishers are really so scared of losing profits, they shouldn't be. With prices dropping on the hardware, I'm see more and more ebook reader owners out there (not just on the forums but also commuting in downtown Chicago). Since I've bought my ebook reader, I've bought more books in a shorter amount of time than I would have if I were buying dead-tree books. I see a increase in sales rather than a decrease or profit loss for the publishers.