> very little of the cost of making a book is tied up in the physical format Either that's bullshit, or the costs are entirely artificial. I really, really want "Concrete mathematics" by Donald Knuth. I really, really don't want to pay €80 for it. A good alternative for me would be the e-book, but it isn't any cheaper. I doubt if anyone will buy the ebook for that price while there are free copies available online.
It's misleading in that it ignores all the costs between creating a physical copy of a book and a buyer placing it in their hands. There's the obvious things like logistics and less obvious things like paying for placement and future liabilities for "unsold returned inventory" (typically destroyed instead of returned because an unsold book is less-than-worthless).
But 10 years ago, an e-book was often cheaper than a printed copy, allegedly because Amazon was willing to take a loss and everyone else had to follow to compete. The Great Steve Jobs didn't want iBooks to compete with Amazon by losing money, negative gross margins aren't the modern Apple way, so he colluded with the Big 5 publishers to force the agency pricing model on everyone. DoJ slapped them all on the wrists and the agency model lives on.