As I was browsing Amazon this afternoon, I came across an interesting book about the relationship between the Duchy of Lancaster and the English Crown in the late Middle Ages. The historian of Britain in me squealed with delight until he saw the price: $140 for the Kindle edition. And that includes Amazon’s 20% discount!
Having spent several years in the Ivory Tower, I’m well aware that academic books are overpriced. I’ve spent a small fortune lining my bookshelves with titles like The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, and The Rise and Fall of the High Commission. Part of the reason for the inflated prices is that, let’s face it, these books aren’t exactly bestsellers. They’re big, bulky volumes that are almost always produced as hardcover editions to ensure maximum longevity. Their print runs are small since the vast majority of them are destined for purchase by academic libraries. I suspect that only a handful of them fall into the hands of private individuals. With such miniscule demand, you have to charge high prices in order to remain profitable.
But I’m not sure that same argument applies when ebooks are involved. For one thing, the press doesn’t have to worry about the cost of producing a physical copy since it’s all just a bunch of electrons. Charging $140 for something that exists solely on my Kindle is outrageous.
Unfortunately, I don’t see this situation changing any time soon. I don’t have any facts to back this up, but I suspect that the ebook revolution hasn’t exactly caught on in the academic market. Since academic libraries, not private individuals, make up the lion’s share of their sales, academic presses don’t have much incentive to lower their prices. And academic libraries are, to some extent, a captive market. If they want to have a respectable collection in a given field, they’re going to buy most of the new titles that are published in that field.
Thanks to the financial crisis gripping our institutions of higher education, university libraries have less money to spend on improving their collections. Perhaps academic presses will end up having to cut their prices in order to keep selling to these increasingly cash-strapped institutions. Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?
Codex Lochianus 
Perhaps authors have a stake in this games as well. In order to fairly compensate the author of a low volume book, you need to price accordingly, even for ebooks.
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This seems like it’d be a good opportunity for tiered pricing. Libraries would probably still buy physical copies of books at the high current prices even if individuals were able to get digital copies on their e-readers for a more modest sum.
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I feel your pain. I often go through interlibrary loan for costly books like this. I borrowed one book that cost $300. I scanned the pages I needed and returned it. All it cost was the $10 loan fee.
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