A quick thought re: ebooks and pricing

Walking around today, I had a thought. When ever I hear people defend the prices on ebooks, one of the things they say is that the publishers' costs aren't all that lower with the production of an e-book as opposed to printing an actual book – that maybe it's a dollar or so per copy.

That could be correct, and still not justify current prices.

In the cost of the book you also have to figure the cost of shipment, warehousing, distribution, etc., and whatever else it takes to get the books to the store. I'd be very surprised if those costs were born by the publisher. Cut that person out, cut out the need to maintain a sales force, distribution, and warehousing, and the total cost of getting a book to you, the customer, drops. Whenever I order something, who pays shipping and handling? Me. And once it's out of the hands of Amazon or the eBay seller or whatever, their costs for it are zero. B&N, the now defunct Borders, and all the other bookstores bear those costs.

Now, even in the ebook world, those costs do not drop to zero. There's some bandwidth costs, some costs to maintain a payment system, credit card fees, power, etc. But I think those costs are reduced by the move to e-books.

Am I missing something?