There is an illogical practice in the field of the eBook business where despite the lower fixed and variable cost for the distribution of each e-book, many firms continue to charge a higher price for their e-book than the same hardcover copy. The situation can be summed up nicely in the blog post: “while Canadians seem to have growing choice between e-tailers, most of those sellers aren’t actually going to bat for consumers by trying to lower prices”.see blog here
Amazon is one of the exceptions to this scenario where it consistently tries to fight with publishers over the price of eBooks, in which publishers have been more or less been denying the digital revolution.
In my opinion, the internet eBook business should innovate fast to meet the expectation of the customers in the future. When the fixed and variable costs are both lower for eBook than hardcover copies, there is no reason for the eBook to be charged at the higher price. Essentially, because society as a whole prefers hardcopy than electronic version, eBooks must bring something of value than hardcopy does not provide (for example lower cost), the failure to do so would induce the buyer to purchase the hardcover copy, in which profit decreases because there is a higher cost involved with the hardcopy version.
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