Let's compare the broadcast to cable TV conversion with the print to electronic book conversion.

• Cable TV has more content, ebooks frequently have less content. Cable TV offered more channels from day one. In contrast, I have bought premium priced ebooks that had the illustrations removed.
• Cable TV provided better picture quality, ebooks provide lesser image quality. Cable TV added a lot of expensive infrastructure in order to pipe an over-the-air signal over a wire to make it more reliable. In contrast, publishers are making consumers pay for the infrastructure to get simplistic layout and typesetting, lower resolution images, and a world without colour.
• Cable TV was easier to use, ebooks are harder to use. Cable removed the need to adjust the antenna and the stronger signal meant that viewers spent less time adjusting the tuner on their TV and VCR. Ebooks add complications. Even in a world without DRM we have to connect to another computer (via USB or a network) to grab a computer. With DRM we sometimes have books mysteriously fail to work.

So people were paying for cable TV because they were getting a much better product. The only thing that paying for ebooks gets you is a portable library and the ability to be so antisocial that you never have to see a book store clerk.