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There was an interview on CNBC around 1 pm today with the NYT guy and the CNBC anchor mentioned how the ebook revolution was supposed to happen 10 years ago (he still has a ereader from then in a drawer somewhere)...
The main problem which was emphasized by both the anchor and the NYT reporter is that publishers and distributors do not want to cannibalize print sales so they are not going to sell ebooks cheap. The verdict as mentioned, Sony Reader, nice step forward, for geeks and niche markets...
The bottom line to me is that unless something forces publishers into ebooks as music/movies studios were and are forced into online content by mp3's and broadband respectively, not much is going to happen in the ebook world.
So to a large extent the Tower of Babel and drm are less of a problem than a symptom, and we better hope that Google digitizes everything and reaches a licensing deal with major publishers like they did in the YouTube case, or that cheap automatic book scanners are going to come to market...
Liviu
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