I think a lot of what DMcCunney is saying makes sense. Both to my finite knowledge of the industry and what I've encountered as a consumer.
From the comments made, it is apparent to me that perhaps the greatest area of contention is the behind the scenes efforts that go into publishing a book. Some portion of this is, without doubt, greed - contractually inflicted for whomever's benefit.
However, that is not the real issue.
The real issue seems to be the workflow model that the industry is using to create an ebook. They are trying to treat a re-flowable format as a per page format and have things a bit backward. Perhaps understandably. Because some ebook consumer is going to yell "foul!" if their ebook doesn't look exactly like the paper book. But this is adding a lot of additional overhead and effort that is in many ways wasted.
Based on advice I received when inquiring about editing ebooks, Adobe InDesign was a piece of software to seriously avoid. It simply added too much useless overhead and programmatic gobble-dee-gook (yes, it's a technical term
) to any output - at least with respect to ebooks. [To be fair, I should mention that this was about version CS3/CS4. I believe a new version was just released - perhaps things have improved.] So, for instance, I could take a simple text file into Sigil and get comparable output (at least) without nearly half of the trouble of dealing with InDesign. Oh, and without the DRM issues as well.
Honestly I think the publishing industry is going to find that they are in the midst of a paradigm shift. Yes, right now, an ebook is the "red-headed step-child" of the industry. Not wanted, not cared for, not catered to. Eventually, as Generation Y, and eventually Z, refuse to deal in heavy, dusty, old-school books the market will change.
The industry will simply... follow the money.