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While we're mentioning the pricing thing to get people to buy kindles, there's a side-effect that is also mentioned in Nathan's blog and is very noticeable if you look at the informal surveys he's done--it makes people expect an ebook to cost less.
Yes, that's a major reason that a lot of publishers advocate the agency pricing model - it means that they can control the price and try to keep people's perception of ebook value up. I fear the damage has already been done however. I think it's also been counterproductive to try to peg ebook pricing to the price of the print edition - it's undeniable that when you buy an ebook, you're getting a somewhat lesser product in various ways - so that hasn't helped with the public image.
Something else that just occurred to me is that with print runs, the more books are printed the cheaper it is to print. So if you think about it, while some massive bestsellers might still bring in a lot of sales in ebook form, it's possible publishers are also not getting that bit of hidden savings. I'm not sure if it's enough to really matter or not (I'm just speculating).
Yeah, books do get cheaper the more you print, up to a point - then it levels off. Though with bestsellers it's quite usual for there to be a royalty escalator clause in the contract - sell over 50K books, your royalty rate goes up, that sort of thing.
I don't remember where, might be in one of those links, but someone did a workup a year or so ago of what an ebook would have to cost in order to just break even for publishers and it was definitely more than most people were saying they thought it should be.
It is definitely more, though once you get over that bar it's all gravy.