pervert, I’ve heard similar stories to the smelter one, with the same message. If it looks so “quick” and “easy,” why don’t they just do it themselves?
Getting on a hijack for a moment, I remember in art school there were some students who were, let’s say, “unmotivated.” They didn’t seem to love art and the sometimes hard work that went into it. But they didn’t, I suppose, make the connection between hard work, practice, and results. So many times I’d get a fellow (“unmotivated”) student ask me, “I’ll bet you’ve had lots and lots of lessons, like, special lessons to be able to do that, right?” I’d say, “No, not really. I just draw a lot.” They’d then say, “I’ll bet you really had to struggle hard and spend a whole long time to get that drawing just right, right?” And again I’d answer, “No, I just draw a lot.”
They’d exhaust every possible explanation as to why I could do some of the work I did (not that I was that great) and do it quickly and without a lot of struggle, while they could not. And they seemed really ticked off when my answer basically was, “No, I just worked hard. I practice and practice and practice. That is ALL.” These students seemed to want to hear that I had some “special” advantage that they did not, which would explain why I didn’t have as much trouble as they did. They didn’t want to accept the possiblity that perhaps I could do things that they couldn’t because I worked harder at it. And that if they had worked as hard as I did, they could have the same results that I did. No! No one wants to hear that the “secret” is hard work! 
Ah, my sig line. Long story. A late, lamented Doper, Wally (of “putz” fame), had a knack for making sig-lines for everyone (often involving bad puns or turns of phrase), and I asked him to make one for me. I think he got Yosemite and Yellowstone mixed up. (Yellowstone has the geyser.) So he made a joke involving a geyser. But hey! Wally had made me a sig line, dammit, so I was going to use it! (He passed away a few months after he made the sig line, if memory serves.)
That’s true for the most part. I don’t anticipate that people who produce, for instance, large colorful art books or “coffee table” books are going to worry about P2P cutting into their business. But for those books that are mostly text, I think that some people would prefer to pay $0 for an eBook on P2P rather than, say, $20 for the paperback book. Not all, but some.
In my case, I am pretty sure that many people would prefer the book in paper form, but many people would gladly “share” the eBook for free. How much percentage would “share” the eBook, I do not know, but I would think that it would be a not-insignificant percentage.
See, this is the crux of it. Who gets to decide what is “reasonable”? Apparently some people think that unless I sell something that I took 5 hours to do for no more than $35, I’m “overcharging.” And my feeling is, my work is not some God-given right, something that they must have, and must have at a price that they deem “reasonable.”