You say “If you want Kindle format books…” Well, if they cost more than the paper version, then I really don’t want them and won’t be buying them.

I doubt that it’s going to be just me: digital books have disadvantages, too: formatting infelicities, photos and color charts look terrible (although other readers do better), getting around is more awkward. So I’d think that people for whom the advantages aren’t overwhelming (e.g. travelling light with lots of reading) will be passing as well.

But I agree that it doesn’t make sense for the ebook to cost more. It may be just a quirk of the publisher’s discount scheme for academic titles. Which is to say, it’s sold to Amazon as a short-discount book, and Amazon applies different markup to the ebook.

Whatever, it’s insane that the Kindle version is ever more expensive than the paperback. Insane.

(It crosses my mind that I don’t look at best sellers, so my sampling is horribly skewed towards academicy things; science, poli-sci, international relations.)

Hmmm…not so much. The largest cost saved, printing, normally accounts for about 5-10 percent of the cover price of a book. Warehousing and distribution are also significant costs. Of course, the retailer, Amazon or whoever, still wants their margin. Author royalties? For physical books, this is 5-15 percent of the cover price (depending on format); ebook royalties usually have a different structure.

The book still has cover art? Somebody has to do that. Good art and design is not cheap. Editing? Copyediting, proofreading? How much do you like poorly written, disorganized writing with typos? Admittedly, even in traditional publishing these functions are getting squeezed (note Felix’s comment: “He’s not a professional writer, and the story is a bit clunky at first, but he becomes very fluent during the crucial central part of the book”–suggests that someone spent a little effort polishing up part of it, but let the rest go).

Of course there are promotional costs, if you want someone to actually know about the book. Apple featured the book? All right, I am not privy to Apple’s arrangement with the publisher, but my guess is that that didn’t come for free. When you go into a bookstore and see a book prominently displayed in a visible location–the publisher has paid for that.

Sure, some ebooks will be cheap, and some should be cheaper than their paper equivalent. And a $3 price point may actually be pretty fair for what amounts to a lengthy magazine article. But for most books it won’t actually support professional publishing. Self-published slush material, maybe, but if you want anything decent, it’s still going to cost money.

Yes, I would buy low-cost shorter works, primarily because the purchase and delivery process is so seamless.

Another nice byproduct of the Nook format is that it has enabled sites like the Gutenberg Project (http://wp.me/pJhAL-7u) to offer free versions of out-of-print books, completely legally. Thanks to this, my reading habits now include works that I never would have read otherwise.

It seems that just about every mention of e-reading is accompanied by complaints about pricing. Most of the e-books I buy are anywhere from $1 (paperback) to $10 (hardcover) less than equivalent print books. However, price should never have been part of the compelling reason for e-readers. Instead, it’s really about changing reading habits, and carrying an entire library with you.

Printing a standard textbook perhaps costs $10? (I have bought similarly sized books new at that price.) It shouldn’t be that much cheaper in the electronic version.

Why? Because e-books are way too expensive. As David239 noted, many e-books are more expensive than their physical equivalents. Then consider the abundance of free content on the web, the fact that library books are still free, and the fact that it’s not too difficult to find used books for under a dollar at library sales and flea markets.

Then add in the fact that e-books are much less expensive for publishers to produce.

Now ask yourself why ANY e-book is being sold for more than $2-3?