@camelclutch:

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but aren't the books you "actually wanted to read" the relevant ones to have researched?

@SaraFimm: And if I don't want to start up a netbook, and don't like the backlit screen that causes eyestrain? And I want the ability to read in the vehicle on the way to ball games and on trips. Hard to do with a backlit laptop or netbook. I don't want all the extra stuff of a netbook, just a good reader.

@stuphology: Some of us want something a little bigger to read on than a phone or iphone, and not backlit. I am currently looking for a good reader for my textbooks for college, and I don't like reading them on my computer. I want the ability to pick up a reader and immediately start reading without turning on a computer or having all the 'extra' stuff that a tablet computer will have.

No one said you had to use one, but don't tell me I shouldn't have that option, if I so choose.

Okay, if you use an ereader you need to log on at mobileread.com and browse the forums. Even if you THINK you might be interested in an ereader you should do this. They have all kinds of tips on where to get books on the cheap, such as baen, fictionwise, etc. A new site that has been talked about there is www.addallbooks.com, which will search different sites for you and tell you how much the book you want is at all of them, letting you make the decision of where to buy, without having to go to each site separately.
You can even search by format, such as epub, pdf, etc.

And don't forget books.google.com for all those lovely free books they have, though you can usually find them through B&N or Sony stores. Mobilread even has some free boks on the site, though I haven't tried any of them.

No way I was able to tote all those with me, and having the e-reader really helped out.

@Techguy1138:
That makes no sense. They did not eat the cost they priced books based on the costs and the profit they wanted to make.

The price of an ebook should always be less than the price of a print book.

Jim Baen, the founder, passed away not long ago. But his...strong...anti-DRM stance continues to hold at Baen Books. Honestly, I rarely read fiction in paper form at all anymore, and haven't for years.

Lastly, I agree with the poster above that ebook readers are dumb. Touch capable tablet form computers and - especially - high resolution small form factor devices like smart phones, iPods, and Zune's make the whole idea pointless. I read my Baen ebooks (among others) on my phone (currently a Touch Pro).

The publisher spends a lot of money promoting the book and the author, a well as paying editors and artists.

My guess is that they simply ate the cost of printing before as part of doing business. When printing gets more expensive books generally don't.

I don't understand why someone would buy an Ebook reader, when (I don't mean to sound like I'm a paid spokesperson here, but still), I, for example, bought an Ipod Touch that's a lot more useful than an Ebook reader AND I can read my ebooks on it.

It doesn't make sense to me at all to buy something whose sole use is to read ebooks.

I understand a lot of people think the bulk of the cost of producing a book is in the printing and shipping, as that's the most obivious part of the process to a reader, but that's actually a fairly small percentage. First and foremost is the royalty to the author. Then there are the salaries for editing, copyediting, and proofreading. There is a designer (yes, we could all just read everything in courier with no page numbers but really, is that what we all want?), a jacket designer (even eBooks have cover images), and there still needs to be a publicity or marketing staff (or trust me, you'd never hear about that book you're dying to buy but only for $10). Publishers have to pay for legal departments, finance departments, HR, Sales, not to mention rent, utilities, and health benefits for all the above people. Yes, not printing, warehousing, and shipping the book saves a couple of bucks, but that's about it. A book, even at $25, is a lot of bang for your buck Entertainment-wise. I can easily spend as much at the movie theater for only 2 hours of fun, whereas a book, even a pretty short one, is usually at least twice that, if not 8-15 hours (depending on the length, difficulty of subject, and your reading speed.) Read on!

Even though you can fit hundreds of books on a reader, you still don't have the technology there.

And now everyone wants to put touch screens in everything, so when you flipping the pages, you would get oil and grease over the screen and you have to consistently be wiping it off.
And some of these screens are annoying when you have any kind of light hit off of it. I hate those glossy finishes.
Say if you spill some water or food on it, water on it is most likely gonna kill it, and then now you won't be able to use it anymore. Water spill on paper, wipe it off and let it dry.
You won't have to worry about dropping and having a regular book break. You can drop a thousand MacBooks on it, and it still won't break.
On a reader, it's hard to flip back and fourth between pages.

The point is: why are they so expensive when they cost virtually nothing to distribute. The answer is basically the same as that for other digital versus hard copy media:

No one wants to dilute their hard copy media. Now, you may ask yourself, "If it costs $6 to print a book they wholesale for $9, they make $3, but if it costs $.00001 to distribute a digital copy and they wholesale it for $4 (or direct sell it for $6) they make a ton more money! Why worry about dilution?"

The reason is the dilution of the hard copy media doesn't happen in a vacuum. First, not everyone owns the digital device (whether kindle, reader, or iPod). Second, there's a devaluation that can occur if the price disparity between items is too great, even though common sense suggests otherwise.

In other words, if people see a digital 'thing' for 1/10 the cost of the hard-copy 'thing', they will think the hard copy is too expensive. This is true even if they don't own a way to have it digitally.

Finally, there's the "shopping" piece. Many people buy things by seeing or touching them. This is why brick-and-mortar stores do well in spite of price differences. It's quite frankly very difficult to find new music, authors, or movies from searching around a web site. It's much easier to pick them off a shelf. This is one of the reasons so many online places rely heavily on recommendations/look at this also.

It only costs about $30, and it's compatible with books from all the major sellers. Best of all, no DRM!

Ok, I'm usually the last one to blame the OP; but why would you buy an ebook reader without first checking how much the ebooks cost? It would be like buying an xbox without bothering to check what a new game goes for (although I guess not quite the same as you can always get xbox games used).

Why should an ebook cost the same as a printed book?

"Yeah, can't help you with that too much, Michael. The problem is we're in the early stages of ebook sales going mainstream, and that means every publisher and every retailer is trying something different."

I disagree with this. While eBook sales ARE a new concept, Sony has always been trying to squeeze a few more bucks out of the pocket of the consumer. Sony Vaio laptops used to be insanely priced.

Furthermore, I've always tied Sony to the IBM of the 80s. Memory Stick Pro or MiniDisc, anyone?