Technical books have been doing revisions (editions) for ... ever? Some fiction books have seen re-release in substantially different revisions well before ebooks became popular enough to warrant the "e" prefix (Stephen King's
The Stand comes to mind).
So it's not a new idea, ebooks just make it more convenient. I personally would rather that most fiction continued to come out as finished text, with only ever minor (spelling and significant grammar) corrections made, but my preferences aren't going to make much difference - the capability is there and it
will be used. It will be interesting to see how much it is used, and how such revisions are sold.
Would - to take my previous example - the new edition of
The Stand be considered "v2", and like most commercial software require a significant upgrade price for purchase? While spelling and grammar revisions would be v1.1 (or v1.0.1 build 01234
) and could be a free upgrade to existing buyers? And how will be buyers know whether a "major" version change is really worth the money. It might be like upgrading
pick-your-bugbear-software-package to the next major version only to discover it's essentially the same thing with the screen colours changed. The possibilities boggle the mind.