Re:Huh, what's that again? (Score 1)

Why do you think ebook prices are artificially high? Amazon's pricing is perniciously low: they intentionally undercut other retailers, accepting real losses in the short-term to gain market advantage. This convinces consumers that the market value of an ebook is lower than the real production costs. All the services that go into making a book are still required: editing, design, PR, etc. These things cost money. Except now, with Amazon forcing prices (ebook and otherwise) to artificial lows, the publishers can't afford to pay the employees that used to be responsible for those aspects of producing a book. Your "artificially high" prices have put lots of people out of a job. (I mean that literally. Publishers farm out their copyediting to freelancers now, instead of doing it in-house. And most books receive a fraction of the editing they used to get.)

A common argument goes like this: "It's an ebook! It costs so much less to make! None of the costs are there! No warehouses! You don't have to pay for paper!" You could call that specious, but it'd be more honest to call it stupid. (I am not accusing any particular person in this thread of making that argument.) Does an ebook need to cost as much as a hardcover? No. But while $25 is too high, the $8-$10 range is definitely too low. Unless, that is, you favor a market with one or two distributors and one or two large publishers. And hundreds of thousands of self-published authors, of course, all fighting for spots on Amazon's Kindle charts. Have you read many self-published authors? Think of how hard it is to slog through the comments for a typical Slashdot article. How many do you read before you find one that seems worthwhile? Can you imagine doing that -- times a hundred -- just to find a book to read?

P.S. I'm sure that Amazon will keep their prices this low once they have all the market share. You can totally trust them.