Economics
As an aside, I looked up the paperback TreeBook I was reading, it cost $9.99. Yes, it was available on Amazon in eBook format ready for instant download. I didn’t have to order it and wait for it to come in the mail and pay postage. I didn’t have to drive down to a bookstore, find a parking place, hope the book was in stock and pay taxes on it. BUT, the eBook price was exactly the same as the paperback price. $9.99. Now that’s a rip off and that is due to the pure greed of publishers.
An eBook costs nothing to produce compared to the cost of paper, ink, machinery, and labor for a TreeBook. There is no shipping, no warehousing, no returns and more shipping. So, why do they cost the same? Pure, unadulterated greed. The publishers think they can now, after trying to stop eBooks for years, cash in on the publics’ sudden discovery of eBooks. We do not need publishers. They should be taken out of the equation. This is really true too when it comes to textbooks which have always been a robbers roost bilking generations of students.