Recently I have heard several people complaining that the ebook that they bought on their device was more expensive than the paperback book. The problem lies in the details:
Most of the major publishers have come up with a Agency Model (where publishers define the final price at which retailers can sell the books and Retailers just act like merchant of records ) Which means that the retailers don’t have rights to discount these books similar to what they can do fro print books (most of the print books deals are on wholesale terms – which gives retailers right to discount this further)
Hope all this makes sense to you or may be not but this this how may be publishers are trying to make sure that ebooks do not kill their existing revenues from print books.
