Of course everyone out there who thinks of himself or herself as a potential author would love for publishing firms to vanish. Quality filters are the crank amateur's greatest fear.

But, all you have to do is check out a few digital tracks of genuinely self-recorded, self-promoted, self-published music (not so-called "indy" labels, which are just record companies by another name) to realize that it is -- almost to the last song -- unlistenable garbage.

Sure, the record companies put out some garbage of their own, but it's a smaller percentage of the total and at least well-produced. Look at your mp3 library and I guarantee most of you have chosen firm-filtered music over self-published songs the vast majority of the time. There's a reason you did that.

Moreover, authors already have a hard time making a living as authors; most of them have to work two jobs just to feed themselves. A price-slashing free-for-all would mean that, eventually, the only people who will find the time to write quality do not go hand-in-hand.

So, I'll keep the publishers, warts and all. You can pitch the short-sighted, anarchist naivete to someone else.

Many Kindle users, including moi, refuse to pay more than US 9.99 per ebook.

It really doesn't matter who the guilty party is - be it Apple, Amazon or the publishers - DO NOT BUY EBOOKS THAT COST MORE THAN US 9.99.
Get the word out.
p.s. Hmmm, the ebook fiasco is just like what we went through with digital music downloads... Will they never learn?

There is a known fact that out of the two dollars one pay for a cup of coffee, the farmer - the only one who made the thing possible - receive only one cent; the difference goes to others. The same applies to authors, artists and so on. Obviously this will change in the artistic world, where the product can be found online - don't forget that all this internet phenomenon is only a few years old - the new distribution system is only at its infancy, but the direction is obvious - few middlemen will survive, and only those who would prove to be helpful to the new system. It is very likely that all the current players would fade away, replaced by a system in which the creators are also the publishers and the new Napster would be a search engine specialized on finding the available legitimate artistic creations, be them books, songs, pictures or low-budget movies.
With all the hype, the ratio between e-books and printed books is maybe 0.1% - fairly insignificant. On the other hand the e-readers are much too expensive and proprietary - they won't last. The e-reader of the future would be as open as a MP3 player and would cost no more than $40. Just wait and you'll see.

As Tom Smith a few posts above me inadvertantly explained the magic formula of price and value discovery in modern america. You discover just how much coke a publisher wishes to snort off hookers breasts and butts. It's the original king model and the stale old religous model. Make a sufficient offering to the "lord" and you will be blessed with his goods. Make an insufficient offering and well you're the "bad brother" who won't trade what you have to the "good brother" to make the "lord" happy.
You know when Aristotle started ranting about the publishing industry in his later works it was easy to dismiss it as as codgy old man jealous of so many people getting attention from so many books but I think the new new revised Greek civilization is going down again.
I haven't been to a book store in years. They've turned them into freaking time space distortions where there's nothing that wasn't inked in the last 38 seconds for sale, probably to avoid you noticing that it's all been written before and said before, just in different ways in older books.
Plus kindle and Ipad suck at book discussion fights. I can kill 2 or 3 people with a nice thick book but you can't even give someone a headache with a kindle or IPad before it cracks and breaks. ;)

What's that? It's unfair for Amazon to tell you what you can and can't do with your own book?

Publishers loved DRM when it was being used against us, but now that it's used against them, they don't like it any more?

@ Josh, @A. Nielsen

You guys hit the nail on the head. You should both be given jobs at GoogleBooks (TM). Remember, do no evil,(and undo evil done by greedy others like Amazon, Apple,and the RIAA-like publishing industry).

What we need is separate publishing rights for print and ebooks. Somebody big, with plenty of bandwidth, cough - Google, needs to come in as a publisher and distributor for ebooks. Price them at $10 for the first 6 months, $5 for the next 12, and $3 after that. Google gets half, the author gets half. Google wins, the author wins, the consumer wins. Amazon and the traditional publishers lose big because they couldn't get with the times.

It's the same for all download media, MP3s, eBooks, video...

They should be sold the same way CDs, books, and DVDs are sold. The publisher sets the wholesale price, and the store sets the retail price. And the publisher has no say over who can buy from the store (no more USA only crap).

The "agency model" will fix the price. Every one will have to sell for the same price. No sales, no discounts.

The current system where the store sets the wholesale and retail price is just as bad as the big players with muscle will be the only game in town.

This is just swapping one bad system for another bad system. Different people "win" but it's not the consumer.

@A Nielsen: But the marketing might of a publisher could come in handy.

But there's been this pattern in music for a while now. Smaller indie companies doing the 50/50 deal, cheap global distribution.

It is inevitable that the publishers will have to face up to the same as the music industry. With that high pricing it's only a matter of time before piracy of ebooks is as common among avid readers as it is with avid listeners.

The publishers are no longer needed. If I was an author I would make my book on my laptop and sell the electronic version with 50% of the sales prize going to me.
That would mean the prize would be between 2$ and 3$.
At that prize people would buy if they wanted it. (Today it is free at the library. But as a reader I would go through many more books if I could sit on my couch and download them. Another result will be that libraries are dead!)
What is missing is an outlet that offered this setup!
You can be sure the publishers know...

Let's face it, Amazon originally came in demanding and getting 65% margins on the Kindle and pricing control. They just caved on the royalties and have lowered their rate to 30% plus 15 cents per megabyte, just slightly higher commissions that apple charges... but they sure didn't want to lose pricing control but they will, books are not like music, and publishers should have the chance to charge what they feel is optimal. Yes publishers need to give a bigger chunk to the authors but Amazon has been greedy beyond belief and gotten away with it for too long. Frankly 30% is a bit high in the long run for e-distribution given the low costs, I believe eventually it will settle in a 20%.

I'm with Pat.

I started reading books on my Palm back at the turn of the century, I still read them on my Treo 680 with a combination of eReader and MobiPocket. I tend not to buy digital editions of books however, they are outrageously overpriced. I'd rather buy deadtree versions and convert them myself.

B

It cost how much to 'publish' an ebook? For years the publishing industry has bellowed out its rational for charging outrageous prices for paper books (little of it going to the author). Now, for the price of a disk, they can produce books economically--and the price remains close to a physical book. It is comforting to know that greed is alive and well.

@Pat

I have never heard of ereader. I have heard of amazon and the kindle. Maybe they did invent the (effective) market after all?

Why oh why is everyone acting like Apple and Amazon are the only players in the ebook market?

Ereader has been selling ebooks for over 10 years, has a very decent collection, has deals with major publishers, sells books for under 10$ and has reader software for just about every smartphone or computer device on the market.

Amazon was 8 years late to the party, and all you guys talk as if they invented it. Amazon could vanish tomorrow, and the ebook market would be just fine... BETTER if you ask me!