Trust neither
> Commission/advance, Editing, Proof-reading and art
Those make up a sizable chunk of the costs of a paper book. From what I 've read on various author's comments, it's around 60-75% for most books (excluding the insanely popular ones on one end, and specialty stuff on the other).
For anyone who suggests that authors could do it themselves and go straight to Amazon, go read comments by professional writers. For the most part they don't want to do it themselves and want someone (whether you call them a publisher or not) to do that.
> most of which at the moment are still being covered by the print versions anyway
Why does everyone (on various sites) keep saying that? I don't think that pricing eBooks on the basis that they make up a negligable amount of sales is a great plan, if they're hoping to increase the amount of eBook sales.
Also, I would assume that some portion of the eBook sales is cannabalising the paper sales - I wouldn't buy both the eBook and paper version. eBooks should share their part of the production costs.