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I think the most likely scenario for the future is this.
There will be a huge number of books of excellent quality available through e-method internationally and those wishing to make money from it will have to compete with those who don't. Functions such as editing and revision will be crowdsourced and the general quality of free and freely distributed books will exceed what the publishers can provide.
Authors will write books because they have a tale to tell and while some will develop a following and make money out of it, many will do it because they enjoy the creative process.
Educational texts will become almost predominantly covered by Creative Commons and only a few examples of non-fiction will be commercially produced. Even then, they will be widely copied despite improved public acceptance of copyright.
As a result, many authors will only write part-time and we'll see other forms of revenue generation become popular ( eg, linking a book to an online game service, with revenue provided by the game service, or linked advertising inside the story ).
Ultimately, people will see little value in paying for book-A when books B, C and D are free and of equal quality. DRM will remain for those who have to enforce payments, but it's more likely to be found on early-editions of expected bestsellers, technical books and restricted-access books.
I think the era of being able to write a book and expect to make a lot of money from is it well and truly behind us for the majority of writers. Internet 2.0 is a dream that some believe will protect their revenue, but I think when they wake up the realities of the world market will be colder than they would like.
Sure, they will be able to charge for their book and effectively restrict access without it being easily or widely compromised, but how well do you expect one vendor can sell icecreams when another vendor right next to him is not only giving them away for free, they have sprinkles on them too...
Same for books.
Regards
David
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