I have to agree with you slayda,
I think a publisher might lose out on some revenue on one hand (because maybe I email you my copy of xyz book). That said, as you say, you were likely not buying it anyway but there likely would be lost potential revenue on this point; maybe you send me a copy of a book I might have bought. To the extent that everyone did book swaps, that lost potential revenue would definitely put people out of business. Of course, as we all know, most people are more than happy to pay for content.
That brings us to the flip side - content will be consumed and paid for happily; especially if made easily available and transferable. Nobody likes a 'trapped' format and its one of the biggest obstacles to really seeing ebooks start to get some serious sales traction.
The only thing holding me back on purchases in much larger quantities is this whole drm issue and me not being able to watch/read things I have bought on devices I own. Open that tap up and sure, it might be rougher for
Amazon to compete with
B&N or whoever wants to open an ebookstore and sell content, but with that freedom of content movement from device to device and likely slightly lower prices (due to some incremental competition) I would say ebooks would fly off the uh, shelves (hehe); more than making up for any 'lost' sales here and there.
Catch is, everyone at the moment wants people locked into their devices and their formats to try and extract monopoly style profits. The flipside of this - people hate that and will resist; regardless of drm 'agreements' buried deep in the fine print of buying a device from someone. That short term outlook won't make them more money in the long run and just ticks customers off with the providers products (I have a new
Kindle, but I can't say as Amazon is endearing themselves to me with all restrictions - although I would likely be just as ticked with a
Nook at the moment for similar reasons). Remove these issues and sell more books!
CD and DVD sales are no small potatoes and they are copyable (or readily so in the case of dvd's) so clearly sales will happen if things are setup to the preference of the consumer; even if I can give you a few of mine or vice versa. Heck, look at the Itunes store; huge sales volumes because its easy and legal - and funnily enough, I can pass you my mp3 file for 'free'...but Apple is still somehow doing exceptionally well. Hmmmmm as they say!
The real @#%^* to me is the international treatment - because I am outside the US, the 9.99 book in the States is....15.03 or somesuch here. Its ridiculous - there isn't even shipping going on here if its emailed to you. That then leads to consumers (me for sure) doing the hoop jumps required to get accounts setup in the US all to avoid these extortions (thats how it feels anyway); hardly a way to keep your customers happy.