For you, maybe they're not! Me, I value bits more than the artifacts that carry them. My MP3s are worth far more to me than the CDs I ripped them from; the CDs invariably got scratched or lost, and I was lugging around huge books full of them. Once iTMS came around, I virtually stopped buying them altogether.
I'm not going to argue that there aren't people who value archival formats. There clearly are.
However, it's not the job of a pricing scheme to ensure that everyone buys your product. Almost the sole job of a pricing scheme is to maximize the revenue stream commanded by the product. Literally the first step in designing a pricing scheme is to study the market, segment it by perceived value, and then price the product to attract the largest (Buyer x Price).
So, I humbly suggest: irrational attachment to physical objects as carriers of bits aside, for most people (not you, but most), the value of pure digital forms dwarfs the archival value of ink.
But irrational attachment to physical objects is a major factor in book pricing right now. Putting that aside because it favours your argument is like setting aside irrational attachment to designer labels when discussing the price of clothing.
I'm not going to argue that there aren't people who value archival formats. There clearly are.
However, it's not the job of a pricing scheme to ensure that everyone buys your product. Almost the sole job of a pricing scheme is to maximize the revenue stream commanded by the product. Literally the first step in designing a pricing scheme is to study the market, segment it by perceived value, and then price the product to attract the largest (Buyer x Price).
So, I humbly suggest: irrational attachment to physical objects as carriers of bits aside, for most people (not you, but most), the value of pure digital forms dwarfs the archival value of ink.