It appears publishers haven’t quite come to grips with the e-book phenomenon:
…the Kindle edition of Dan Brown’s latest thriller The Lost Symbol is outselling the hardback on Amazon. Meanwhile, Ted Kennedy’s True Compass, the other hot book release this week, can’t be bought via Kindle or Sony or as an e-book at all.
Most publishers fear cannibalization of their paper-based book sales by their e-book sales, because e-books are typically priced at or around $9.99, much lower than typical physical books.
Also, since publishers can’t, for the life of them, estimate how many electronic copies of a book they’ll sell, they can’t tell whether the increased volumes will make up for the lower price.