I just received another of my Polish language books in the mail on the Polish Army in the 18th century. A great book with some good source material, but it still falls short. The reason is the economics of making a full color book means it is either very expensive to get everything you want in, or you are forced to leave things out to be able to publish it at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these new tech people who say books are dead in physical form. I like the feel of a book, when it is well made it is a thing of beauty, but the finances of publishing means that you can do somethings better in e-books.
First, not everyone has a color e-reader (nook, i-pad, etc) and I find there can be formatting problems in some of these devices to allow color pictures to be seen properly, but when you have a lot of illustrations, it is far cheaper do use an e-format. For some people this may mean physical books might have websites to provide extra material on-line, or it might mean that at some point e-book sales may be used to help provide impetus for physical books. There are books and information that may not be viable in physical form, but will be allowed to get published in e-book. I remember a few years ago at Book Expo seeing a book entitled "Birthing Techniques of Azerbajan". I'm sure it was of use to people who study these things, but how could they afford to publish it? This is perfect for an e-book. The drawback is you can publish anything at any time and some non-professional stuff is already creeping onto POD and e-versions at Amazon, but the potential is there for a new burst of information.
In terms of history and especially military history, when studying armies, units and uniforms a picture is worth a thousand words and e-books may be the best way to allow information to get out there.
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