My supposition — and, being a publisher myself, it’s an educated one — is that the large houses are simply attempting to milk that cow as much as they can before they’ve no longer any access to it. “Avarice”, essentially, driven by desperation.

As for reading printed books over electronic ones: I sympathize. There’s not a damned thing wrong with the printed book. The problem with them is that it’s tough to have enough of those in stock and available for all titles ever made. Thus, for the less-than-popular titles, the electronic book can take-up no space and virtually no cost on the publisher’s or author’s budget. Certainly there are many books which people will wish to buy and keep for a long long time, but those titles which people wish to only read once and which aren’t got by the Public Library are perfect for eBook distribution.

Electronic books are not — despite the panic-filled exclamations of some — a replacement for paper-based books, but an alternative format only. No one is going to come into your home, remove your books from the shelf, and then hand you a Kindle with the message “this is your new reality, citizen”.