This week marks a great self analysis week for ebook producers, sellers, and the poor schmuck who prices the book.

Amazon has been the king of the ebook hill and it kind of set a fast pace around the track for what an ebook should cost. It tends to hover around $10 for top of the line books, but has bounced around all over the place. In the process of dominating the conversation, Amazon is making most of the money. Amazon is a nightmare, according to many of my publishing pals in New York.

So Apple has decided to join forces (though collude might be more accurate) with some big book publishers to find some corrupt way to screw Amazon, but the Department of Justice is trying to break up the party.

The problem with the ebooks, it seems, is that for many titles, $9.99 is too low when the printed version cost perhaps $35 or more. Even when you factor out the cost of printing and distribution, which might be as high as $10 a book, the book (minus those costs) should still sell for $25. That means the ebook should sell for $25, not $9.99.

This, of course, is common with high-tech, where down-pricing everything is the way it works. The businesses living in the 1950s have to rethink the model, but instead, they decide to make a deal with Apple that cuts Amazon out of the picture. Thus, many hip and smart new releases could go to the Apple iTunes stores exclusively and sell for more money than on Amazon.

Short summary: everything about this screamed illegal, period.

The good news about this kerfuffle is that it revisits the whole ebook trend in big way and re-establishes the notion that the ebook is the future and everyone should buy a Kindle and/or an iPad. There is no stopping this trend. It's becoming a juggernaut.

But it does beg the question: what is an ebook worth? I have some thoughts.

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Let's go back a few years when you could buy a true paperback (the small one) for 25 cents. Gasoline was also 25-cents a gallon. Inflation changed things and the same paperback should now sell for about the same price as a gallon of gasoline. In the interim, the larger format paperback called the trade paperback, which is the same size as the hardcover book only with a paper cover, sold for maybe $3.95 or so. Now, some are $25 or more. In fact, there is very little rhyme or reason to book pricing today with or without an inflation calculator.

Amazon looked at the market and could not justify any ebook selling for more than $10. There was nothing but bits. No ink was needed, no distribution except a computer, no paper.

The problem is a publisher might have an author with some sweet deal based on cover price. An author might get a 20-percent royalty on a $40 book, which means $8 a book. It happens. If the price for the electronic version is $10 and the deal stays the same, the writer would get $2. The author would balk. And if the publisher keeps the so-called cover price at $40 and Amazon chooses to sell it for $9, then all sorts of problems crop up.

This whole thing needs to be straightened out fast. The serious fly in the ointment for everyone seems to be that 99 cent and $2.99 price point books are flying off the shelves (as it were). Nobody can deal with that phenomenon, totally ignoring that in the distant past there was such a thing as a "dime novel," which would be like the dollar novel today. So that makes sense to me.

This Department of Justice suit is necessary to understand the entire scene better and make the needed adjustments to please everyone.