Mike Shatzkin put up an article yesterday around the various stakeholders (authors, retailers, distributors, and readers) in the ebook industry. It describes the history of the ebook market and his thoughts on coming changes.
In the “vision” stage of ebook adoption, which ended with the launch of the Kindle in November 2007, authors were virtually powerless. With ebook sales even for established books struggling to make triple digits, publishers were gunshy about accepting digitization costs for books other than the biggest sellers and it hardly made sense for authors to make the investment on their own.
Check it out: http://www.idealog.com/blog/aside-from-the-publishers-how-the-other-stakeholders-fare-as-ebook-adoption-continues