It's much more than you are saying. If you start with the retail price of the book (which your referenced article does), there's 50% off the top generally for w

It's much more than you are saying. If you start with the retail price of the book (which your referenced article does), there's 50% off the top generally for wholesale discount (that is, the retailer pays about 50% or so). There's an additional 15% for a distributor's share (this means a company that has a sales force, generates orders, etc.; if you don't use a distributor, you need your own internal sales department which will cost almost as much). You don't need a distributor for ebooks. You have returns -- at least another 20% or so of your revenue will be eaten up there for most titles.) No bookstore returns for ebooks. There is printing, shipping, warehousing. (Normally estimated at about 15% of the cost of print books) No printing, etc. for ebooks. There's capital costs associated with doing print runs -- you put money up front and then have to wait for return while books sell, and also you run the risk of printing books that never even ship to stores. Hard to estimate but another cost that doesn't apply to ebooks. If you add it up, 15% for distribution. 20% for returns. 15% for printing etc. These print book only costs come to about 50% of the wholesales price. It's just not so that ebooks cost almost the same as print books. Traditional publishers still have a business model that depends upon bookstore sales. The real problem for traditional publishers is, if ebooks are priced much lower than print books, it's an obvious problem for an important part of their business model. So they struggle mightily to keep ebook prices high and to persuade people that the costs of ebooks and print books are the same. As the article indicates it's not working -- self publishers and non-traditional publishers can produce ebooks at a much lower price point, because the ebooks cost less to produce.