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Pardoz, I'm not exactly sure where you were going with your post, so if I get the point wrong, my apologies. I took a look at the Lynn Abbey article to which you linked. Her position was that printed books had a substantial cost that was quite a bit higher than publishers were willing to admit. She was claiming that for every 5 books printed only 1 was sold (the 20% sell through). This means that the printing, distribution, warehousing, and pulping costs of all those extra books need to be added into the actual cost of printing the 1 book that does sell. I believe the industry standard for retailer returns is actually in the 30% range (not Lynn's 80% figure), but her point (and by inference yours) is that these retailer returns are a huge part of why printed books have a higher cost than ebooks. I agree completely, and this is largely why I thought the extra cost of paperbooks was closer to $5 than $3.50.
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