My theory on this: the e-book industry shot itself in the foot with DRM.
Lots of people pointed to the way the world's music buying habits shifted from buying CDs to buying MP3s (before it shifted again, to streaming) as an argument for why e-books would inevitably displace printed ones. But there was a fundamental difference between those two examples, namely that the music industry abandoned tying digital purchases to a single device via DRM relatively quickly, while the e-book industry held doggedly to the idea that e-books bought from Amazon should only work on Kindles, e-books from B&N should only work on Nooks, etc. Which made e-books notably less appealing from the buyer's standpoint; with digital music you could have a reasonable assurance that your purchase today would play on the device you own tomorrow. With e-books, you could not, and you still can't.
(Yes yes, I know about Calibre and so forth. I'm talking here about how these things looked from the perspective of the average person.)
It's a great example of how all the players in a competitive market can hurt their long-term interests by relentlessly pursuing their short-term ones. It was in everyone's short-term interest to try and grab more market share at the expense of their competitors by locking customers into a closed ecosystem. But by doing so they passed up the opportunity to grow the entire market. And a small slice of a huge pie beats a big slice of a small one any day.
Lots of people pointed to the way the world's music buying habits shifted from buying CDs to buying MP3s (before it shifted again, to streaming) as an argument for why e-books would inevitably displace printed ones. But there was a fundamental difference between those two examples, namely that the music industry abandoned tying digital purchases to a single device via DRM relatively quickly, while the e-book industry held doggedly to the idea that e-books bought from Amazon should only work on Kindles, e-books from B&N should only work on Nooks, etc. Which made e-books notably less appealing from the buyer's standpoint; with digital music you could have a reasonable assurance that your purchase today would play on the device you own tomorrow. With e-books, you could not, and you still can't.
(Yes yes, I know about Calibre and so forth. I'm talking here about how these things looked from the perspective of the average person.)
It's a great example of how all the players in a competitive market can hurt their long-term interests by relentlessly pursuing their short-term ones. It was in everyone's short-term interest to try and grab more market share at the expense of their competitors by locking customers into a closed ecosystem. But by doing so they passed up the opportunity to grow the entire market. And a small slice of a huge pie beats a big slice of a small one any day.