All of the problems you mentioned are solvable either with proper attention paid to creating the non-PDF epub or with a smarter reader (no reader currently handles orphans/widows properly, but there's no reason why they couldn't).
Quote:
Originally Posted by djpyle
I think many publishers are much lazier about laying out their ebooks than their PDFs.
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This, I think, is the main problem. Publishers are lazy. They have to create PDFs in order to get their books to the printer, and they figure they can just publish those PDFs to satisfy people who want electronic versions of their books. This is not acceptable. There is no reason why publishers can't spend a little bit of extra time editing epub or mobi versions of their books, especially if they want us to pay greater than paperback prices for their books. Unfortunately this is not going to change unless we give publishers an incentive to change, which means no more buying of PDF-only ebooks. If they see that they can't make money by just pushing out their PDF master, they'll have to do something about it. Ebooks are not going away, and in fact are gaining ground against traditional print books. Any publisher who refuses to properly edit a non-PDF version of their book is risking death by technology.