Why is download sheet music so exepncive

In the UK I'd by Best of Books, sometimes containing 20 songs, for about 11.99. I think my Beatle's Anthology with around 100 songs was around 25 quid. Download sites seem to be £2.50 a song, but I can't understand why, when distribution and printing is cheaper.
 
I never have faith in the the original key for the song either, they seem different on different sites, then you check against a guitar tabs site and it's different again. I play in C, Bb and unusually G, so I have to transpose twice, so having faith in the original key would help.
 
 

Yeah I understand that bulk buying an 'best of' is going to be cheaper. How much is an individual  printed sheet normally, is their any saving it being downloaded?

that's where the artists actually make money for their art.
 

LOL, well it's still more income IF you have publishing rights, then you will get off of actual record sales.
 
 

Scoot
 Seems to me that the main market fo sheet music would be for beginners.

I think professional musicians who need to cover a song but do not want to spend time working things out and searching out the information would find it useful. If you are a Pro time is money, at minimum wage £2.50 is 23 minutes.

Sites charge what they can get, or what they hope to get. This is not just a music publishing thing. Most scientific journals cost a couple of hundred dollars a year for a subscription, something like two or three hundred articles, say a buck or two a piece in that format. You can typically order the article as a download from the publisher for 25 to 30 dollars each. And this is a system in which the authors get no money and often have to pay editorial and in some cases publication costs, the peer reviewers work as volunteers, and the editors get a pittance. If you need the data in a hurry and have a budget for a literature search you will probably find it cost effective compared to going to the stacks in the library.
 
Song lyrics are freely available because in many cases they are pirated, i. e. the site does not pay the author or copyright holder any kind of royalty at all for hosting the post. http://www.grammy.org/files/pages/sam_guthrie.pdf  
Publishers are probably more aggressive at enforcing their rights for the sheet music, and the average kid who has nothing to lose by posting his best guess at the lyrics is not so likely to be able to turn out a good transcription of an arrangement.
 

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