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I think it's a mixture of things myself. First of all the economy isn't exactly the best and there is the cost of having an internet connection as well as the cost of the actual ebook purchase. And of course the publishers are creating a self-fulfilling prophesy I think as well in that they are reluctant to do as much to promote ebooks as they could. I mean back in 1984 for example Apple had it's "1984" commercial that only played once (during the superbowl) and they spent a million bucks on that. Surely book publishers could do something similar in cost to promote ebooks (though not for a one time only ad) if they wanted to. I mean if an author like J.K. Rowling can make as much as they do on books as an author then surely the publisher isn't hurting for money either. But I haven't seen any big promotional ads for ebooks being put up anywhere. It's like ebooks are traditional publisher's dirty little secret or something. That and often ebooks are priced just as high (if not higher) than paper books are. The insubstantial nature of ebooks (which are just data) works against that. If publishers would lower the prices and promote their ebook catalogs more they might be surprised how many would be sold.
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