Hate to tell you this, but I can honestly say that I had a *small* level of influence on some publishers doing this.

Back in late 2007 I made a recommendation to a few publishers to increase the price of e-books. (They'd been considering it anyway, because of the rampant issue of e-book pirating).

In my opinion, an e-book should be the same price as a regular book. What you lose in one value (hard copy), you gain in other value (easier to carry around 5 ebooks than 5 printed copies)