A lot has been mentioned on eBook pricing, and justifications for the pricing.
Concumers see the lack of production/transport/retail costs (i.e. no paper and printing, no long-haul transport of books to shops, no retail outlets) and think the cost should crash. On the other hand, there are still editing, proofing, formatting and so on that must be done for all books to prepare them for mass production (either printing or eBook creation).
So I think there should be some reduction compared to paper books but perhaps not as much as many readers would think or wish to see.
I don't mind paying for something that has been through these processes. But the inordinate number of eBooks I have bought to date with massive errors is ridiculous - not just the odd typo but spurious characters throughout the book, or incorrect character encoding, or links to footnotes that don't work, or extra images included in the book package that are never able to be accessed - and the list goes on!
I agree that editing and proofing are significant costs in book creation, but I find it hard to believe these tasks are being more than spuriously done at the moment, given the large number of obvious errors compared to pBooks.
A vulgar yet eloquent line from a movie (I think!), whose name escapes at the moment, springs to mind as sanguine advice to our publishing friends: "Please don't piss down our backs and tell us it's raining!"
Justify your costs with editing and proofing services, but please have the decency to provide those services with some degree of care...
