Salon.com

Most consumers believe that e-books should be a lot cheaper than print books because the publisher has been spared the expense of paper, printing, binding and shipping/distribution. However, only about 20 percent of the cover price of a new hardcover goes to those costs: about $5 out of $25. Retailers take from 40 to 50 percent, and after that, the majority of the cost of a new book goes to author royalties, editing, design, marketing, publicity, overhead and so on.

You are under the false assumption that items are priced based on marginal cost. They aren't in practically any market, they are priced at what consumers will pay and what the competition is selling at. Fortunately for them consumers are still willing to pay extra for the digital "convenience" and the competition doesn't sell the same books.

That's right, because nobody markets books, or pays authors, or runs press tours, or edits books...

Do you work for free? Why should people - you know, editors, typesetters, designers, copyeditors, etc. - in the publishing industry? And, even if the ebook is a digital translation of the print product, somebody still needs to make that digital translation and check it over to make sure all the i's stayed dotted and t's stayed crossed. Until you're willing to work for free, don't expect other people to do so.

It's not quite zero. You've still got the initial work for layout and editing, as well as the author to compensate.

Let's say 5 bucks for a "hardcover" and 2 bucks for a "paperback". Far more than they're making from Barnes and Nobel, and then Amazon could tack on a dollar to actually make a profit instead of a loss on selling these things.

BS. Have you ever seen a kindle in bright light? You can't read shit. Even indoors if there is any sort of glare from a light shining directly on it you can't read it. The same is true for *ANY* display in direct sunlight outdoors.

I like the idea, but I'm not going to buy any eBook reader until I can safely read it in the bathtub like a regular book. Crazy, maybe, but that's my criteria.

Oh, and no Wikipedia surfing for you either.

And for all that, you get to pay more than in the US. Yay!

I am the one slashdotter that reads TFA (the full article) before posting. I even did a search for tryptophan. Nope, it's not there. Maybe the submitter forgot a link, but tryptophan is never mentioned in the sciencenews.org article.