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Speaking from decades long experience, when it's just text PDF is meaningless. It's overkill. It makes sense if you are sending files to printing house or for technical/scientific/complex stuff, but for clean text it's like building a rocket for going to grocery store. Unfortunately, that rocket is very easy to build: just print "Save as PDF" and that's it. In the other hand, ordinary user doesn't use OCR software, so scanned pages are again easy to save as PDF. That's why PDF is so popular.
Regarding book-eBook relationship, eReaders have their limitations. In PDF you are have a book that will be printed with all fonts, design, layout and other things that eReaders just don't have yet. So, if somebody can't live without professionaly made book with all elements that naturally appear in printed books - then buy a printed book. eReaders are different technology with all pluses and minuses and we must accept that. Maybe one day we will be able to do complex formatting with eBooks format but today we can't.
And to conclude, as a professional who worked in a range of publishing houses and newspapers, I honestly don't care if Platon or Monte Cristo is set in Garamond or Times, I am reading the story on my Kindle, not looking at the design. When I want to study book design I get a printed book.
Sorry for a bit longer post.
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