You're right for now but eventually (similar to valve in the video game industry) someone will champion and perfect digital distribution, market it well enough,

You're right for now but eventually (similar to valve in the video game industry) someone will champion and perfect digital distribution, market it well enough, and get enough publishers behind the idea. It will catch on. Most likely in computer science first and then move on to other sciences. My senior year computer science capstone class we were all issued 1st edition kindles with our books preloaded onto them. It was awesome. Granted the books were not major textbooks (all <50$ range) but it was definitely a step forward. Also no one had to pay for a thing, just sign a waiver that said if we broke or lost the kindle we had to pay for it.