From what I understand from someone in the industry, the digital version does take non-insignificant effort to format and meta-tag the literature according to t

From what I understand from someone in the industry, the digital version does take non-insignificant effort to format and meta-tag the literature according to the ebook formatting appropriately. Furthermore, the risk for the publishing company still exists, because editing, marketing, formatting, and cover-creation is still something that ebooks need and still costs money to produce. In other words, the idea that digital books should cost significantly less than a printed book doesn't account that digital books require similar amounts of effort and labor, plus additional formatting labor. "Sounds like an industry with a business model begging for disruption." This already exists in the form of wattpad and other self-publishing mediums. There are plenty of authors who make a living off of these mediums. But it's a different ball game and requires someone to manage their author career like a business, not as a traditional writer. (hiring an editor, a cover-producer, and doing one's own marketing) Thus, it's not really something that authors are generally enamored by.