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What's holding ebooks back? the lack of a critical app (for most people).
For me personally, there is only one reason that made me hunt for an ebook reader. webscriptions. and ONLY webscriptions.
Before Webscriptions started at Baen, I had some vague idea that somebody might read on a PDA (typically a Palm device, at least that's what I saw.) When Webscriptions started, I quickly realized I couldn't read that long at my computer, and went looking for what was available. I found a Rocket ebook, and never looked back (for Baen, anyway, and Fictionwise used to catch a bunch of my book money too). I still buy paper, but my reasons for doing so are dwindling away as drm is cracked, publisher make books available, and prices stabilize.
What will make ebooks roar is some killer app that will make *most* people want to have one. For ordinary voracious readers, those reasons are already around. Ipads and Kindles and such are starting to reach toward that mass "gotta-have" audience, but I don't think it's quite gotten there yet.
It might get there with a sufficient critical mass of periodicals available on a good reader. It might get there with textbooks. It might even take most of another generation. (er, um, sorta, anyway. I used to read that computers wouldn't have there greatest effect until a generation of children had been raised with a computer available as a fact of life. seems to me that just about happened, with young coders dreaming up new ways to use their everyday tools.) True explosions of ebooks and reading devices might take long enough for kids to grow up used to textual content just being another part of the electronic media.
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