The moment you want to lend a friend a copy they are more expensive.

This was mind blowing to me. I can understand games did not become much cheaper by being electronic-only (though it did give rise to much cheaper indie games) but like 16 years ago when Kindle came out, I thought paperless books would slash the consumer prices by at least half. Turns out the publisher just increased their margins.

While the author's share has not increased at all.

This is where used books win, and why physical books need to exist. I will never purchase a digital file for $9.99. I have however purchased PDFs directly from the writer's website, usually for no more than $5, which is OK.

>I will never purchase a digital file for $9.99.

License

The cost of printing a mass-market paperback is under a dollar if you're doing a large run. A hardback is a few dollars. Producing the physical book has a negligible effect on the publisher's costs.

Lately I've taken to reading almost only classic literature; since books published before 1923 are in the public domain, the ebooks are very cheap indeed (i.e. completely free via Project Gutenberg).

The other advantage of this approach is that classic works are better than the books I was reading before, and there are enough of them to last me several years at least.