ebooks - more expensive than paperbacks!

OK, I have a Palm Tungsten E2 coming soon, finally joining the 21st century - OK, still a few years behind the times, but that's how I usually work. I'm a used car guy, too, normally. BUT... to the point of this rant. A new book is released, say in hardcover. 26 bucks or so, using King's BLAZE as an example. Now, with Palm's Palm Reader software, I should be able to buy the e-book and download it, read on my thingy. If I want to pay $17. Or, wait! How about this: Dean Koontz's THE GOOD GUY, a book I want to read, hardcover on sale at Amazon for $15 (paperback is out now I think, or coming soon - say for $9). How much if I want to download the electronic - cost-free (except royalty and profit) version? $23!!!! There is NO INVENTORY, people! No storage, shipping costs. And NO - I work with computers - there's NO COST to transmit the book. If there has to be a number, let's call it 1/1000th of a cent.

And yet...?

Of course, the conspiracy theorist in me knows the answer: the biggest chunk of the cost of a book - this is absolutely true, I haven't gotten to the conspiracy part, yet - is the $ paid to the distributor. These folks get the books out to the bookstores, supply Amazon & co. They're valuable, for printed books. They're useless for e-books, obviously, since there is no printed product. But they are the link between publisher and store. They carry a lot of weight, and are obviously using it to say: nuh-uh! You will not charge people for e-books any less than a hardcover or trade paperback, because more people will use their Palms to download them at a reasonable price, and we'll make nothing! How dare you! (of course, the publisher and author will make money...)

Downloading an audio book, READ TO YOU, by a professional, is cheaper.

Shame on you, book-making people. Shame... shame...

By the way, if you're wondering, the entity in the publishing biz who gets the smallest cut (usually under 10% of wholesale) is, you guessed it, the author who wrote the thing in the first place. Of course, we're dime a dozen - I don't mean that cynically, it's true. Even so, I WANT TO BE ONE OF THOSE... WAAAAAHHHH...

OK, gotta go. Sorry for not posting an update. I'm around 20% done with draft 2 of WORLDS IN YELLOW... or DESTROYER OF WORLDS... or THE CLOCK.... or ARMAGEDDON OUTA HERE......

Dan