Aaron Wall is struggling with the forces of the publishing world, who've re-nigged on their original agreement to let him maintain e-book publishing rights if they take his book to press. Aaron has a lot of positives and negatives on both sides of the equation, but the heart of the matter is who will have control over his book moving forward.
My personal opinion is that Aaron should walk away from the publishers and self-publish SEOBook, but there's a good bit of discussion. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens to the "legitimate" SEO world's most famous author.
That publisher must be nutz! Don't they realize that they have one of the top SEOs on the planet promoting this book. IMO if he puts a link to the publishers site on his promotion pages they will get some of the sales, a great SERP kick and those customers might buy a second book. Win-Win if you ask me.
These are not smart publishers. Find someone new if possible.
I think that Aaron should find a new publisher. While self publishing does have its benefits, getting the distribution that a professional publisher can give will be impossible.
He should definitely not abandon the ebook, whatever choice he makes. This would be like google making a 400Kb homepage. Don't destroy the concept that has brought the success in the first place.