As we all know, in a free market, the cost of a good trends towards its marginal cost of production. But monopolies (or even oligopolistic competition) keeps that from happening. See Microsoft and the price of Windows. Same thing here. Rent seeking.
Book publishers are like any other business: they exist to try to make a profit. Of course they're going to charge as much as they can for their wares. I'm not sure why this comes as a surprise to some.
As we all know, in a free market, the cost of a good trends towards its marginal cost of production. But monopolies (or even oligopolistic competition) keeps that from happening. See Microsoft and the price of Windows. Same thing here. Rent seeking.