Personally, I'd never buy an eBook, ePub, or whatever. I either invest in a dead tree, get a unDRMed PDF, the web copy, or just check it out from the library.
There are far too many options available today for me to buy into a format that can do less than what I was able to do 5 years ago.
I really hope you change your mind eventually. Dead-tree books are probably on the decline, and if nobody is willing to pay for electronic books because of the prevailing attitude (electronic things are free!) that's going to mess things up.
Don't get me wrong, dead-tree books have their place. In addition to ebooks, I own something like 200lbs of reference books. I'm not blind to the pros of paper. (though you can bet I'll be excited when a real textbook replacement comes along, and I don't have to lug 200lbs around)
Not entirely; books would still be written, that's for certain. Except, the books that are written with no expectation of money whatsoever or as a personal project are either statements for political reasons, or often not worth reading. Most of the popular books and series are written by career authors. Would anyone be a career author if it didn't pay? I don't think anyone tries to be an author for riches, but if it can't pay for food you can hardly do that for a living.
It seems like you presume all the authors will simply continue to write out of passion for writing. Some will, but I feel that's an incredibly narrow-minded and self-interested view.
Now that the ipad and other ebook readers are good enough to read on comfortably, I don't see myself buying a technical book made out of dead trees ever again. I might for fiction because I am a bit of a romantic..
I guess it depends on the technical usage. I still go back to my college era calculus and physics books. Expensive at the time but worth it's weight in gold.
For emerging technologies (hot, new languages) I prefer StackOverflow, Google, and wikis. I'd only give ePubs a shot if the price was substantially cheaper than the dead tree version.
I'd still buy an iPad, but only for light reading and the 100k apps.
There are far too many options available today for me to buy into a format that can do less than what I was able to do 5 years ago.