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the question is, does Macmillan really care if ebooks sell? Publishers have made it clear that they are not really interested in selling ebooks when hardcovers come out because they are worried that it will impact hard cover sales. In addition, they have shown that they are not really interested is selling them if they have a paper back version out either, in many cases, unless you are willing to pay a premium to get the electronic version. Now, I agree that they should be interested in these things since I believe that they would get enough extra sales to compensate for any "loss" of revenue per copy sold; but, unfortunately, they do not see it that way.
And, for anyone that thinks that the availability or price of an electronic version does not significantly change the number of people that are likely to pirate books in electronic format, I can tell you that you are wrong from what I have seen. The common theme for this is "I am not willing to pay what you want for it so but I want it anyway, the publisher/author/etc is not loosing anything since I would just not have it if I could not have gotten it free." And though this decision is not morally right (or legally for that matter) and some may say that this just an excuse and they would have pirated it anyway, I believe that most of them are telling the truth. That being said, while it starts out more difficult to pirate books than buy them, once you have learned your way around I would not be surprised if it becomes easy enough to make it hard to resist the temptation even when things change. This goes for other industries as well (music, movies, etc). The moral of the story being if you do not get your act straight soon enough, then it becomes to late. I believe this is what has happened to the music industry.
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