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JSWolf may have hit the nail on the head when he said the main problem was the source file. Mayhap different formatting (as in templates) of the source would help. Much of the formatting that goes into preparing print and e-book editions are probably duplicated. Once the formatting is done for print editions, they still have to be "typeset", printed, bound, packaged for shipping, shipped, etc. Any that do not sell have to be destroyed and the covers returned for credit, adding the loss of the unsold books, packaging the covers for shipment, the added labor involved, etc. to the equation. All that enormously adds the cost of materials, labor, etc. to the cost of paperbooks that e-books don't have. Once an e-book has been formatted (which should be simpler than ready to print formatting since pagination isn't as great a concern, if at all)), it doesn't get printed, bound, packaged, shipped, handled by the retailers, and unsold copies returned, etc. Distribution can be much cheaper because computers handle the vast majority of the labor load, very, very little of which involves physical handling. The drain on natural resources is reduced to almost nothing.
I still feel much of the moaning and groaning by publishers comes from a reluctance to leave the familiarity of how things were done in the past and be willing to adopt new technology. There is a huge physical overhead infrastructure (printing presses, distribution network, etc.) that they feel would have to be written off. I feel that infrastructure can be phased out by not spending the money needed to maintain older parts of it and letting it gradually die off as demand for paper books dies off.
E-books just make more sense financially to everyone involved but will require a willingness from authors, publishers, retailers and consumers to adapt to the new technology. Most (if not all) of the objections I've seen so far are excuses to cover that reluctance to adopt new technology, excuses like an unneeded dependance on the old technology in place (get over it and move on), the need to have some physical in hand (get over that, too), etc. Sure the new technology has a lot of bugs to be worked out (which would be greatly expedited if retailers of the new technology would settle on one format and quit being so greedy, trying to force their own proprietary formats on us in an effort to monopolize the market) but it will happen. If this generation can't adapt, the newer ones coming up will (and have been).
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