Killing the hardcover?

Tim Carmody has a great post on pricing e-books:

But cre­at­ing a mar­ket­place isn’t just about sync­ing to a device and match­ing read­ers’ eye­balls to con­tent. You also have to estab­lish, respond to, and even­tu­ally sta­bi­lize read­ers’ and pub­lish­ers’ expec­ta­tions about sales, espe­cially about price.

This is harder than it sounds. How much should an e-book cost? How much should pub­lish­ers have to share with the retailer? Just what are you buy­ing? For hard­cov­ers and paper­backs, these expec­ta­tions have built up over a long time. This tweaked a bit when online sell­ers and big-box retail­ers started offer­ing moderate-to-steep dis­counts over cover. None of this makes estab­lish­ing norms for dig­i­tal sales any easier.

There's always been a ton of debate on the pricing of digital goods, but what I find most interesting about e-book pricing is the conflict it creates between two physical goods, and not just a physical and a digital good. We buy hardcover books because they are the "first," and they fill our bookshelves with large, concrete physical shapes of knowledge and entertainment. Paperbacks carry a similar effect, although it's not as profound (I've always thought of paperbacks as "leftovers," books that you tear to shreds while you consume them; the hardcover is more of a symbol). E-books have completely eliminated the physical traits of the two, and bring the price advantage to the level of the paperback (Carmody fleshes this out well).

Assuming you are not obsessive about the physicality of your books, this is a great deal for you. But at the same time, it kills the storied uniqueness of the hardcover. Could the hardcover just disappear if people are willing to have first access with an e-book? Seems that those who desire paperbacks would have an easier time because they're getting the book for the same price. Ditto with CDs and mp3s: $11 or $9.99 isn't going to break the bank, so you have the flexibility to choose between the mediums. But why would anyone pay $35 for a hardcover when the same story was waiting digitally for them at $9.99?