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well other people have already made many of the points i would mention, so no need to repeat them.
i think, tibiafry, that the biggest thing the music and film industries have neglected to realise, is that the majority of people 1. are honest and 2. understand that if they don't support the artists / authors / publishers they enjoy by purchasing the content they want, these people will stop producing new content. that is not in anybody's interest. on the other hand there is a minority who will continue to get their content by filesharing etc. they will not be dissuaded by drm (they are not even dissuaded by the lack of ebooks ! look at the Harry Potter example, as PilotBob has said), and in fact some people say that the bigger the challenge, the higher the esteem for managing to provide the pirate copy. they are not lost sales, since they wouldn't buy the books, and they aren't stopped by drm. so why even worry about them ?
i think the best way for a publisher to succeed in ebooks is to concentrate on giving the best possible experience to their paying customers : that means reasonable prices and no drm. customers really do appreciate this and will go out of their way to support it. June's comment in this thread is a very good example and it is far from unique. Baen books, which i mentioned earlier as have other people, is an excellent example of a publisher who is widely perceived as understanding the right way to approach epublishing ; they have such a huge following from readers who appreciate their philosophy that there are people who actually purchase everything they publish, even though they might not have time to read it all, and even though they could easily get it for free (some of it is available for free directly on baen's website ; they also have cds of their books which they distribute with paper copies and from what i've heard these cds are full of free content which they encourage you to share : they realise that this is a great way for them to get free publicity and gain new readers, who in turn will buy new books).
no drm also means you can much more easily propose more formats : epub is the industry standard, you should definitely start with that. but as bob has pointed out, a lot of people already use mobipocket format. if you skip drm, you can develop a workflow to make good quality epub books ; since you have no drm, converting those to drm-free mobipocket is trivial and free, so you can make that format available at no or minimal extra cost to you : instantly you have a huge additional customer base, for free (to you, the publisher).
10000 € to pay for DRM which is pointless (because it can be circumvented, if only by copying out the text) and which is hated by customers because it causes the honest and legitimate people much trouble and aggravation, and which also means you are obliged to charge more for your books to recoup your costs (the other big problem with current ebook offers is they are often sold for prices which are considered unreasonably high by readers, partly because publishers are spending ridiculous sums of money on DRM schemes and want to make us pay for it !), well, it seems to me a very easy calculation to make ! think of how you could invest that money in more productive ways to improve your business and at the same time earn happy, loyal customers. i can't understand why any publisher would hesitate, if they really examine the question from the standpoint of the customer.
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