This is just a two-liner from Teleread.org, yet very thought-provoking:

When e-books will truly be "in" (http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=2659)... …when pirates catch up with proofs and "pre-release" original e-books the way they do movies. Related: Prison terms on tap for 'prerelease' pirates (http://news.com.com/Prison+terms+on+tap+for+prerelease+pirates/2100-1028_3-5677232.html?tag=st.prev), on CNET.

While I generally don't condone pirates and the illegal transfer of copyright protected material, there could be a grain of truth in the idea that pirates could be beneficial in accelerating general e-book awareness - at least in the short-run.

This is a quick poll. Feel free to vote and state your opinion on this matter.

The eBook barriers won't fall. They must be pushed down.

eBooks will do to the publishing industry like MP3 players have done to the music industry: make it irrelevant. And that's the main barrier.

Look at the legal, mainstream eBooks today: pretty much the same price as the paper edition, DRM locking the eBook to a specific device, bloated format (like PDF). It's no wonder why most eBook tests have failed.

In order for eBooks to really make it, they must:
1. Be priced correctly. There is absolutely no excuse for them to be priced at the same as the paper version.
2. DRM, if used at all, must lock the eBook to a person - not a device. And unless there is a method of transferring ownership to someone else, don't even think that the price of a DRMed eBook can be anywhere near the price of a non-DRMed eBook.
3. Use a standard, compact format. PDF is useless for a PDA. LIT is worthless since it's tied only to WinCE.

What does this all mean? It means that when all this is in place, the publishing industry has no reason to exist. Authors can "publish" their own books. Needless to say, the publishing industry will do its best to derail such a thing.

Piracy is the start - we need content to get people used to reading eBooks. Then places like Fictionwise can boom (not that Fictionwise isn't doing good right now).