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Agreed about the value of editors, etc.
But back to the evils of Amazon... We've seen (in the Astak thread) that Amazon is prepared to try to protect their monopoly by refusing to authorize Mobipocket support to be offered on any device which offers any other DRM format. That's a problem. Publishers just getting into the ebook market may be pressured to go exclusively with Mobi/Kindle format, just because it's potentially the biggest market out there. We need to hope that Fictionwise continues to offer books in multiple formats, but they're so small next to Amazon that I fear they'll just get lost in the noise. I don't think there is another book retailer who could take on Amazon in the ebook area at this point. Borders is limping already. Barnes & Noble? They depend on their paper business. Apple could try it (and the new, less expensive iPhone announced today might make a decent platform for those who can tolerate LCD), but I doubt the results would be any more open, given Apple's history. A big publisher could tackle Amazon directly, but I don't think any of them have the imagination for it.
Best hope at this point is that Astak gets their units into consumer electronics and big-box stores, where they'll get some attention. And even they are just looking at eReader and Mobi as the only two "commercial" formats they'd support.
The sad thing is that while we can all decry what Amazon is doing, nobody in the marketplace is willing to really step up to the challenge of eBooks other than Amazon. Sony acts like they're trying to keep the Reader a secret or something. None of the other hardware vendors have any advertising budget to speak of, apparently.
Who's left, Google? On Android, maybe? If they could settle the bad feelings with publishers, they've actually got content....
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