[charleski]

Originally Posted by thename

I'm glad we agree re: future of extra content as a means to a viable market. But I think your distinction between the physical and electronic is iffy at best, wholly fallacious at worst.

Not at all. A physical product offers many opportunities to provide a sense of physical luxury and makes it much easier to create artificial scarcity and the notion of exclusivity. Any attempt to sell a limited edition ebook would be dependent on the purchaser being foolish enough to think the DRM couldn't be broken, and the DRM itself would destroy any resale value.

Consider the iTunes move a few years back to offer "iTunes Plus" i.e., higher bit rates, no-DRM, etc. for a higher price vs. the higher priced physical media i.e., even higher bit rates, no-DRM, etc.

Well, I can think of a few ways in which value could be added to the basic presentational structure, though I'm interested in what others can think of. Any such measures have to be careful to maintain the fundamental integrity of the work: you're reading the same basic text whether it's in a deluxe calf-leather binding or a poorly-bound paperback and the quality of copy-editing (and, to a lesser extent, formatting) needs to be retained.

I think of Norton Critical Editions
...
Or consider the Danielewski sibling's collaborative works
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What about those who do want extra content?

Yes, of course there are many examples where truly meaningful extra content can be added and that's great. Publishers should be jumping all over the opportunity to produce value-added versions of these works. But why on earth produce an edition of Homicide containing an interview with Dominic West when you can interview Kyle Secor? That's the sort of spurious multimedia that needs to be avoided.

Even as the current, difficult ebook market stands wouldn't it be slightly cheaper to skip cover images? Good layout? Sound copy-editing?

Well publishers are, unfortunately, already doing that. A cheaper version should not mean an inferior one. We need to encourage them to add value in order to create a premium product.