Steal This Book (for $9.99); The New York Times, 5/17/09

Motoko Rich via The New York Times; Steal This Book (for $9.99):

"Publishers are caught between authors who want to be paid high advances and consumers who believe they should pay less for a digital edition, largely because the publishers save on printing and shipping costs. But publishers argue that those costs, which generally run about 12.5 percent of the average hardcover retail list price, do not entirely disappear with e-books. What’s more, the costs of writing, editing and marketing remain the same...

The doomsday scenario for publishing is that the e-book versions cannibalize higher-price print sales...

Another possibility is that the cheaper prices for e-books entice consumers to buy more titles...

There is some precedent for that theory. When the smaller-format mass-market paperbacks that now populate airport bookstores and grocery checkout racks were introduced, publishers expressed fears that the lower-priced books might destroy the market for hardcovers. They didn’t. Instead, they expanded demand for books beyond elite readers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/weekinreview/17rich.html?scp=3&sq=e-books%20motoko%20rich&st=cse