Well, I think "what the market will bear" is supposed to be the consensus of value, or at least a best reasonable estimate of what the consensus of the target market is. Not sure if that's really clear on what I mean, so feel free to ignore that ...

I don't really care what the publishing costs are, but I do understand they have an impact on cost. I just don't believe the cost continues to be as high as the price suggests. And I do understand that dropping the price by a buck means they have to sell more to make the same money, but I don't think they're at that sweet spot where adjusting the price either way would negatively affect actual profits. I could be wrong, but if I thought that were the case, I wouldn't have got on here to rant.

And on your last point, I think I agree, but I don't think simply charging the most you can get anyone to pay is the way to market an easily replicated product like a digital copy of anything - like an ebook I download myself - with no physical media whatsoever - like a DVD or CD. Setting the cost better than any competing product, but still somewhere in that bell curve of valuation will get the most copies sold. Given that the "competing product" here is the hard copy, and they price the ebook higher than the physical copy, I have to conclude that they don't want people to buy the ebook instead of the hard copy. They want the die hard ebook fans to buy them in addition to the hard copy. And you are correct - I'm not nearly that big a fan.

I disagree that these formulas from the physical publishing world hold in the digital publishing world. I think the crusty ol' brick-n-mortar publishers still haven't got a handle on how this should work. And price is never set by value, it's set by what the market will bear, which is not always the same thing. Value is a personal factor on the part of the consumer, market price is supposed to be somewhere in the sweet spot of the bell curve of valuation by the target audience.

Regardless, I can't make myself believe that the digital copy of a story is worth more than the physical copy. I don't care what the publishing costs are or what the perceived quality of the stories are or Rowling's (or any author's) skill - or lack thereof as a writer. These books are not more valuable in digital format than in physical format because I cannot sell copies. I also cannot easily lend my copy to another person like I could with a physical book. I still believe that if anyone were doing anything right, the cost of a digital book would be lower and the profit higher.

If the cost were lower, I'd be more inclined to buy them, even though I have the hard copies in my home. I wouldn't be tempted to pirate them and justify that by saying I deserve it because I have the hard copy. I'd be less inclined to get pissed off that the only work left to do with this book is marketing and server costs, and the price goes up. And whatever you say, there are no more publishing costs other than building that first digital copy, which was probably done well before the original physical publish date. Hell, most books are never even put to paper until the manuscript is done these days. Those publishing costs have been paid, and then some. The only costs left to consider are marketing and delivery (server costs) and the "personalization" tags mentioned throughout this thread that link your copy to you. You can't tell me this costs more than $7 for every copy of the box set. If so, someone is getting shellacked, and passing that cost downstream.

That doesn't mean that Rowling and the publishers shouldn't continue to make a profit - they should. Whether she - or anyone else - "needs" the money is not relevant in a capitalist society, whatever anyone says. It just means that either they're starting to gouge the market or they're really doing something wrong in their digital market campaign.

I'll almost certainly continue buying ebooks, but I won't buy them if it's cheaper for me to get a hard copy dropped at my door. I'm not an instant gratification freak either, so I can wait if I need to. And if I decide I don't want to wait, I can just run down to the local B&N and use my membership discount to make it even cheaper.

Funny that membership discount doesn't apply to ebooks, eh?

Never mind that, why the hell does it cost $57.54 for me to buy the ebook collection, but only $50.77 to get the paperback set? The Game of Thrones 4 book set was the same thing - something like 20% more for the ebook. What's up with that?

I think I'm missing the whole point of ebooks here. I went and bought a very expensive little gadget so I could:
(a) Buy more books without having to spend more money (cheaper books + old book budget = more books);
(b) Keep more books on hand without having to raise bookshelves on the other half of my house (save space);

Well, at least (b) still holds, but I have very little interest if it comes at the cost of (a).

Now, sometimes I find an ebook that is considerably less than the hardcopy, and that's good, but that seems to be the exception to the rule - or more precisely, the "nobody books" and "not hyped books". The whole ebook movement is pretty good for independent authors to get their stuff out there, but even so you have to spend $20 on $1 pulp books just to get one or two decent reads. I suspect some of the more well known authors are even throwing a fair bit of chaff out there to get in on that "penny market" (See Patterson's "Witch and Wizard" for a prime example). Frankly that annoys the hell out of me.

As for the ebooks, I'm not interested in spending more money to read it on a tablet, I already spent more money just to get the damn thing. Now the damn thing is better for playing Angry Birds or letting my son watch Phineas and Ferb than anything else.

The whole idea behind e-Readers is that there are a number of advantages over traditional print:

1: You can collect a much bigger library without needing storage or more bookshelves.

2: You can take your whole library with you when you travel.

3: You can read a lot more for a lot less.

The problem is that #1 and #2 are irrelevant in my opinion. When I'm traveling, I travel for a reason, and it's not to read. I'm visiting family, off to a festival with the family, etc.. Naturally, I like to bring something to read, but one or two books and maybe a couple magazines is the most I need. Usually, it's just one book. As for the bookshelf, I really like a physical book - we have over 1000 between myself, my wife, and our 2 kids. It's that sense of permanence mentioned in TFA. I don't need to keep a book charged in order to read it, and I don't have to freak out if I spill a drop of whatever I'm drinking on it.

As for #3, this would be enough for me to at least buy more of my books in electronic format, but that argument is a load of bollocks - and the biggest disappointment in the entire eBook scene. I often find that the paperback print is the same or cheaper than the eBook. For instance, the Game of Thrones paperback bookshelf is currently $21.03 at Barnes and Noble. The eBook for the same collection of 4 stories is $29.99. Both prices are exactly the same at Amazon. Why would I want the eBook?

Granted, there are specials where the opposite is true, and others where I've grabbed eBooks for under $5, or even as low as a dollar, but these are books I would never even bother with a hard copy on - and often I'm glad I didn't waste time going to find it at the bookstore. I'm really trying to justify buying the Nook Color with books, but so far, I'm using it to let my kid watch Phineas and Ferb through Netflix a lot more than I'm reading books on it. As far as that goes, I don't even bother watching Netflix streaming videos on it, because the quality really is poor, and I can do better through the Wii or my laptop.

Are you saying Mitt Romney is a robot planted to take over the country?

I knew it!

"What would you like to see slowed down to such a degree?"

My 5 year old. I might be able to keep up with him that way ...