[tzs]

I think you are greatly overestimating how much physical books cost to produce.

Paper, ink, cardboard, staples, and glue are all very cheap in large quantity. The actual material cost of a book is tiny compared to the book's selling price.

I don't know what manufacturing costs are, but based on what I've seen on "How It's Made" and similar shows it looks like it is highly automated, and so I suspect that for the big publishers it too is only a tiny part of the book's selling price.

The third cost that ebooks do not incur that physical books do is shipping. I'd not be at all surprised if this is actually higher than the material cost and the manufacturing cost for many books.

Putting this all together, if the publishers passed on all the savings from ebooks being "vastly cheaper to produce" I doubt that this would result in anywhere near a 50% lower price.

[greeneggs]

Here's a typical breakdown, from 2010: "Out of that gross revenue, the publisher pays about $3.25 to print, store and ship the book, including unsold copies returned to the publisher by booksellers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/business/media/01ebooks.ht... (and the graphic: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2010/03/01/business/01eboo... )