e-books are overpriced

[Dune]

Why? Because they are sold at pretty much the same price as paperbacks, and with paperbacks you have to cover the following costs apart from the publisher's cut and the royalty to the author:

1. Paper (quality and source can differ)
2. Typesetting / DTP
3. Printing (wastage disposal costs)
4. Binding (wastage disposal costs)
5. Transportation
6. Dealer / distributor margins
7. Display at vendors and their physical administrative costs
8. Shipping to customer

With a simple website/e-book distribution model, you are just doing away with all of these. You can outsource most of the remote administrative tasks to cheaper locations. You don't even need to have 'fantastic' DTP for e-books. Most people are expected to read them on an e-ink monochrome display anyway.

Over and above this, your poor customer is paying a big amount for a reader device. Okay, Amazon or Barnes & Noble may be subsidizing their devices with e-book sales, but what about the others? Add to this recurring costs like batteries, network access etc.

Over and above this, with a real book, you can share it with anybody you want. How many e-book sellers will allow you to do this, and for what extent of time? Will they trust you implicitly or treat you like a theft suspect even if they do allow sharing? What about interoperability of different e-book readers? Backups?

Don't we know the DMCA (applicable to the US) is very draconian and is misused a lot by media companies? They won't be able to do shit about 'unauthorised copying and sharing' of printed books, but believe me, they will be WATCHING what you do with your e-books before long. And by the way, these same media companies are hell bent on pushing DMCA-like laws in other countries.

Anyways, coming back to the price of an e-book, I strongly believe that they should be priced at actual cost plus a convenience charge plus justifiable profits - the same profits they would make selling a paperback, for instance. This would actually help them expand their readership multiple times.

And for all those last-mile bookshops, why don't we convert them to e-book reader outlets, with catalogs and upload services from various providers? They would still be selling colour magazines and newspapers, remember.