Not to mention, there are a lot of people who don't care about the medium, but rather the price (e.g., college students). I know if an e-book was priced $8 vers

Not to mention, there are a lot of people who don't care about the medium, but rather the price (e.g., college students). I know if an e-book was priced $8 versus the $10 paper version, I'd go with the $8 for pretty much any book. It wouldn't make sense to NOT have an ebook option, but it also wouldn't make sense financially to price it below the paper version. Finally, although I can see reasons for pricing it above the paper version (you have features like search, copy and paste, etc.), I think many people would find this absurd. Hence, the only remaining option is to price them at the same cost as the paper version. Clearly, any of the other options are possible, but the reasons listed here are, I think, valid for not doing so.