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Originally Posted by bowerbird
in my humble opinion, unrealized expectations have been
the downfall of e-books so far, and the hype and marketing
of eink has been the single cause that is most destructive...
-bowerbird
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Commercial e-books did not succeed until now because it is not in the interest (and not unjustifiably so I think) of the publishers/distributors/bookstores to compete with print books, so they use drm and unrealistic pricing to kill the market. As long as there is no external force to compel the publishers to change, there will be nibbling here and there, basically using e-books to sell more p-books, but no serious attempt to try to expand the market beyond the 1% that occupies now (even if that).
Both the music and movie/tv experience demonstrate that. Until mp3's and Napster, and more recently broadband and time-shifting, there was a similar lack of interest from the music and tv/movie studios in online selling.
Now it's all the rage, and though the business models are still evolving, there is innovation at least...
Liviu