It would be better...
The major publishing houses are to blame for these slaes not being better.
I have a Kindle. It was bought for me by my girlfriend, even though I told her I prefered real books. Her reasoning was she didn't want all my book cluttering up the house (along with all the computer bits, bike & car parts, tools and assorted junk).
It has changed my mind. It is convenient, easy to use and easy to read. There are only 2 small problems.
The first is that I already own a lot of books. There is no way I am going to buy these books again on the Kindle. Unlike CDs (and tapes, videos, DVDs etc) there is no easy way to format shift. I feel I would be morally justified in trying to locate and download these books from the "less legitimate" sources, although others would probably disagree (including lawyers).
The other problem is price. For new releases, the eBook on Amazon is normally priced higher than the Hardback (with a note saying the price was set by the publisher). Even older realeases are often more expensive as eBooks than paperbacks. Once again, I feel I would be morally justified buying the "real" book and downloading the eBook.
The problem with that is it becomes very tempting to skip the "buying" part. They are effectively encouraging piracy with the current model. As the music industry knows all too well, once this has started, it is very difficult to stop. Basically, they are not learning from previous mistakes, and I will have no sympathy when book sales plummet and they start loosing money. I foresee it happenning rather soon if they don't get their arses in gear.