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The Friction from a publishers point of view is:
The number of formats you have to cater for.
The platform dependance, most pbooks in large publishers are designed and created on Macintosh yet all the ebook conversion tools are purely PC.
There is also an issue that I have not seen mentioned much of different ownership by country. A UK publisher will not necessarily have the right to sell in the US. This needs sorting before ebooks can take off, or the 'big boys' lawyers will be chasing the smaller publisher for an ebook bought online in a country they don't hold the rights for.
I also don't think publishers are moving slowly to hold the power but we are all companies who have to make a profit to exist and if a particular market is not seen as profitable then little or no resources will be allocated to it.
Publishers don't yet see the point in spending money repurposing existing files when it is not easy or likely to make money.
And when you read forums like this where the majority seem to think that ebooks should be supplied free, or nearly, with no copyright protection for the author or publisher it is not entirely surprising there is reluctance.
When Steve says "stock some ereaders", Sony don't sell theirs in the UK at all.
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