I think you are greatly overestimating how much physical books cost to produce.<p>Paper, ink, cardboard, staples, and glue are all very cheap in large quantity. The actual material cost of a book is tiny compared to the book&#x27;s selling price.<p>I don&#x27;t know what manufacturing costs are, but based on what I&#x27;ve seen on &quot;How It&#x27;s Made&quot; and similar shows it looks like it is highly automated, and so I suspect that for the big publishers it too is only a tiny part of the book&#x27;s selling price.<p>The third cost that ebooks do not incur that physical books do is shipping. I&#x27;d not be at all surprised if this is actually higher than the material cost and the manufacturing cost for many books.<p>Putting this all together, if the publishers passed on all the savings from ebooks being &quot;vastly cheaper to produce&quot; I doubt that this would result in anywhere near a 50% lower price.