As many of us hoped he would, Simon Jones of Icarus Publishing (whose blog may not be safe for work) has weighed in on the leaked draft of a pitch letter from a scan aggregation site to a major publisher of translated manga:
“The reason print publishers have yet to fully embrace free online ad-supported publishing on the PC is largely because ad profits do not outweigh the diminished print sales due to free distribution. It doesn’t matter that scanlations have legit promotional qualities when the result is still a net loss for the publisher. Otherwise, publishers would be doing this themselves.”
Go read. Or wait until you get home, then go read. Either way, you should also go read the lively commentary on the subject at MangaBlog.