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Based on the comments I've read or heard directly from mainstream publishers (and including comments in the blog), it's pretty clear that publishers are willing to talk about diving into the e-book waters, but that none of them will stick their necks out to be first on the diving board. Whether it's because of extra expense, lack of personnel, uncertainty about future sales, or uncertainty about formats, whatever, we cannot expect them to go out of their way and experiment with e-book sales solely for our benefit.
The independents (by virtue of the fact that they try harder) and much more likely to have their ear to the ground, and more likely to be willing to try new things, such as e-books sold in multiple e-formats, without DRM, etc. Unfortunately, the mainstream industry is paying little attention to the independents, and no one is accurately tracking industry-wide e-book sales, so again, the mainstream publishers have no information to go on.
If one of the e-book selling independents start to make it big, the mainstream publishers will have to take notice... at which point, they'll look at how the independent is selling e-books so successfully, and they'll see a tried-and-true method they can adopt. I expect that is how mainstream publishers will fully enter the e-book market, by adopting a proven-elsewhere e-book selling method and jumping on the bandwagon. If they do not, they risk the growing independents luring their popular authors away from them, thereby costing them revenue from their cash-cows.
So, Jason and everyone else, I'd like to suggest that, if you want e-books, spend more time with the independents, looking for e-titles to buy from them. Help the independents make it big... and in the process, vote with your dollars for the e-book selling method you prefer the most. That, I think, will speed up the acceptance of e-books into mainstream society faster than anything else.
(And for the record, I'm not encouraging this just to see my own sales go up... after all, I'm not a major e-book publisher, and no one's following my sales except me!)
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