Lonely Planet have an online presence, where you can buy PDF versions (and also chapters) of some of their books.
What astounds me is the difference in price if i order in AUD rather than USD.
For example, their Australia Travel Guide PDF eBook is USD 20.99, but change 'Country of delivery' to Australia and it's a massive AUD 34.99.
Any, umm, comments?
I remember a few years back the Lonely Planet shop used to have sales and vouchers that would give large discounts, such as 40% off, or 2 books for the price of 3. I'm not sure if they still do, but I've bought books directly from them in the past when their discounted prices seemed better than the alternatives, but only when they had these specials on.
And of course the discriminatory regional pricing for a digital download is absurd - and the Internet makes it extremely obvious, and possible to bypass. The whole idea is outdated, and just doesn't work well any more in the modern age.
But for the specific book you're looking at, you're possibly better off buying the physical book for $21.83 delivered: http://booko.com.au/products/9781741798074 ; that's only a buck more than the ebook, and you've got an actual physical book that works when you don't have power, can get wet and still work, can be resold, can be given or lent to other people, that you can write on, and that never crashes. But it is heavy (particularly the Australia book, which I have an older version of).
Eventually Australia will end up like the US, where the major department stores say that they will price-match Amazon and other big online retailers, and pro-actively try to make the prices competitive with online stores. They also have store fronts intended to drive traffic and sales to their online stores, so the stores are becoming a bit more like showrooms. Australia will get to this stage too in a few years - but until then as a consumer just refuse to pay inflated markups for no/minimal extra value, and let market forces work their magic.