Why do you hate to tell me this? Because I might be skeptical about the amount of influence you have over publishing houses? ;-)

As far as what either form "should" cost, I suspect you are looking at it from an entirely different perspective than they are. You are making a value judgment. I'm sure they are much more guided by marketing and profitability considerations.

>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)