Every successful business has a business model - I don't believe that book publishers do. They are scared, greedy and won't learn from history. They see what the Internet has done to print advertising and newspapers and fear the same fate - of course they are on the same track - they just don't know it yet.

As an example, Marketing 101 teaches that halving price doubles market yet publishers don't understand that (or don't want to).

Also, they have large infrastructure costs for "dead wood" products - these won't go away unless they learn how to deal with the inevitable consequences of their current track.

Finally, DRM is a disaster - dead wood books don't have DRM - I can lend my dead wood books to anyone I choose, and for as long as I want - can't do that with ebooks.

Until publishers realize that charging the same price for an ebook as a dead wood book, AND putting DRM on the ebook as well, is a losing proposition ebooks will not take off.