If you don't believe this, absent a conspiracy theory about publishing†, you don't believe in markets.
† For instance, that it's impossible to publish without a publisher, which seems objectively false in 2011.
If you don't believe this, absent a conspiracy theory about publishing†, you don't believe in markets.
† For instance, that it's impossible to publish without a publisher, which seems objectively false in 2011.
If the parent poster is correct then we'll see a price correction towards a lower price. We'll also see a more active black market appear as has happened in the world of music if the price doesn't drop.
The 9.99 price is likely low enough to discourage most market participants from piracy but if it goes much higher then who knows. To suggest that the state of the market as we see it now is the optimal one isn't correct since the free market should always be fluctuating as things change in the world.
That said if the price was really too high then no one would buy ebooks and everyone would have fixed that by now or decided to abandon the idea for the time being.
If your logic held, every paper book would cost the same amount; _The Very Hungry Caterpiller_ would cost within pennies of the same amount as Volume 1 of _The Art Of Computer Programming_. After all, you're not paying for the paper. Judging from the amount of junk mail in my mailbox every morning, paper is pretty cheap.
Clearly it is also the case that _The Art Of Computer Programming_ as an ebook has exactly the same scarcity as _Twilight: New Moon_'s ebook; according to your logic, they must also cost the same.
If you're a parent you know that the Very Hungry Caterpiller uses different paper and different production techniques (holes in the pages, thicker paper) which while raising the cost is offset by the demand for it being much greater than TAOCP. TAOCP costs more due to a smaller demand and the fact that substitutes don't really exist. VHC has tons of substitutes.
I mean to say that ebooks' lack of scarcity seems to trigger consumer expectations about pricing and what they are willing to pay. This has implications for the demand curve. I wouldn't suggest that the ebooks should all cost the same but that their cost to produce additional units is zero. If a paperback book experiences a massive spike in demand that's protracted and extreme the costs of books to consumers would rise or a shortage would develop. There is no chance of an ebook shortage apart from amazon.com going down.