The physical book example is not a reasonable comparison because you could probably buy a readable, non-waterlogged copy (or alternative physical format) on ama

The physical book example is not a reasonable comparison because you could probably buy a readable, non-waterlogged copy (or alternative physical format) on amazon for less than the retail price. That option is not available for ebooks or audio books, since they're licensed not owned. And licenses for ebooks are unilaterally dictated because of the copyright monopoly. You want a normal copy of the ebook? Pay $10. Typeset in Arial? Another $10. Typeset in Comic Sans? Another $10. Voiced by a free TTS engine? $20 because our market research indicates people pay more for audio books. The logical way to approach this is that if a product can be automatically converted from one format to another, getting both formats should cost the same as getting the source format, or at most the set should include a marginal fee for the use of the conversion technology development costs + marginal compute costs). But of course publishers aren't going to do that. That reality, however, is not a defense of the status quo; rather, it's an argument for copyright reform. Copyright monopoly forces people to pay again and again for "multiple bites at the apple" for purely-digital products that have no secondary market. They're even more arbitrarily priced than normal IP goods like paper books and CDs and DVDs which at least had secondary markets.