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Book publishers seem destined to make the same mistakes as the movie and music industry. Make your digital product as expensive (or even more so) and more restricted than your real world product - and you encourage piracy.
I'm not saying it's fair - but all of the reasons that make digital great for publishers (virtually free storage and distribution) means its perceived value is virtually nil too. Especially when there's lots of free and excellent quality competition. And unlike music and the movies - there is plenty of superb out-of-copyright material available digitally which you could spend a lifetime reading.
Fair or not - the average price of ebooks is close to zero and getting closer all of the time. Hardly surprising when the average second hand book price is probably under a dollar. Raising prices and making it harder to pass favourite books around friends is hardly going to endear me to any publisher. I don't need to read your latest bestseller - there are plenty of other calls on my time.
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