The cost of printing and distributing pbooks may be less than is generally assumed, but there are other costs that you forget. First the handling at the bookshop. Having an inventory, the rent or other financial cost of the brick-and-mortar shop, the high cost of labor in the bookshop, and not to forget the cost of having to return the unsold copies of books are probably more than those other ones. For ebooks you don't have returns, and the ebooks can be sold at a significantly lower cost.
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If we want ebooks to flourish, publishers have to see them as a revenue source ... and a superior revenue source to physical books.
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I think this is the wrong attitude. Of course publishers need to make profit but the primary focus should be the wishes of the customers. The only way for a company to survive is to deliver what the customers want, at a price that the customers feel happy about and that gives the company a reasonable profit. If you sell at a price that the customers only accept grudgingly, with a product that the customer only accepts because he has no choice (for example DRM), you will lose that customer at the first occasion that he can get a better deal. If you make your customer happy he may stay with you and give you more profit in the future.