Here's a big reason you don't see price cuts: the same party isn't bearing all the costs you mention. With physical books, publishers pay for production, freig

Here's a big reason you don't see price cuts: the same party isn't bearing all the costs you mention. With physical books, publishers pay for production, freight, and centralized storage for distribution to retailers. Retailers pay for maintaining their own active inventories, including warehousing and shipping from their warehouse to individual stores, as well as paying for physical retail space. (And if bookstores don't sell the books within three months, they can return them [hardcover] or strip them of their covers and trash them [paperback] and get a complete refund. Talk about uncertainty.) Only one actor -- the publisher -- sets the suggested retail price, upon which the discounted price a retailer pays is based.