E-Book Pricing: Consumer Perception vs Publisher Costs
Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 7:05 AM in E-Books & Digital Publishing 
Christine Kearney at Reuters on the fledgling e-book market:
The e-book market has grown rapidly with wholesale revenue from e-book sales in the United States increasing to $91 million in the first quarter of 2010 from $55.9 million from the last quarter of 2009, according to International Digital Publishing Forum. But e-book sales still only account for 5-6 percent of overall U.S. book sales and less than 1 percent in Britain, The Financial Times reported this week.
The article has some interesting insights from Eileen Gittins of Blurb.com on why doing e-books doesn't really save the publisher much money:
Contrary to popular opinion, most of publishers' costs are developing and marketing authors, not the cost of printing and shipping books. Such costs don't lessen with e-books even though they sell for less than paper books.
Even keeping that it's in Blurb.com's best interests to focus on print publishing, Gittins has a point. I've heard many people complain that the cost of e-books is too high, saying that the publisher is saving a ton of money by creating a digital version.
In addition to author development and marketing factor, I've also heard publishers say that if an e-book has a print counterpart, the costs associated with a brick-and-mortar warehouse remains the same.
If the e-book industry is going to continue to grow, however, publishers will either have to adjust to consumer perception of e-book pricing or find a way to change it.