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I think all of us are overestimating the cost of the physical media for a book. Most of the wholesale cost of a book is not the physical book itself but the author's piece, the publisher's overhead, and the staff to prepare the book.
rlauzon is correct that ebooks cost less to produce but they still have to contribute to the general expenses of the book. The marginal expense per ebook is very low. The publishers see an ebook sale as a replacement sale for a pbook and still want to recover the general expenses from it.
There was an old joke in the publishing industry about $1 books. "The first copy is $1,000,000. After that they're $1 each. Now we just have to find someone to buy that first copy."
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