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"People who can afford an ereading device can afford all proposed ebook prices."
Um. No. I can afford an ebook reader because that was my one big tech-toy present of the year--I can no more afford their proposed ebook prices than I can afford their new pbook prices.
I buy pbooks from secondhand stores and borrow them from friends; I only buy a very tiny range of pbooks new. (RPG gaming books, and religious books that don't have ebook editions.) I spend less than $100/year on new books. Sometimes less than $50/year.
I'm willing to spend more than that on new ebooks... without DRM, and reasonably priced. I'm willing to wait for the paperback to come out to buy at paperback prices--or willing to wait another couple of months for the thrift-store price. And if the ebook isn't ever going to hit the thrift store price? Shrug. There's no shortage of free ebooks, low-price ebooks at Smashwords, and fanfic. That $100/year is not going to mean "10 novels, and that's all I read for the year."
If mainstream publishers want my ebook dollars, they'll put out editions in a price I'm willing to pay. If they're under the impression that they own the ebook market the way they own the physical book market, they're very mistaken. Many brick-and-mortar stores won't carry self-published or tiny-publisher books... but plenty of online ebook stores will.
They're facing a lot more competition than they want to acknowledge. All their marketing strategies are based on the assumption that big-name publishers' only real competition is other big-name publishers--not small indie companies, and certainly not individual authors scattered around the web.
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