Is the Future of Pen & Paper RPGs in PDF?

greymond writes: "With the merger of RPGNow and Drivethrurpg into Onebookshelf.com is the future of Pen and Per gaming moving towards PDF's or will this continue to be a niche market? From a positive perspective it would seem like the market share has been growing, with the new site boasting of a combined 11% market share of all RPG sales. On the flip side, the current growth could simply have come from the influx of major players like WoTC, Privateer Press and White Wolf making many of their books available on these two sites in PDF format over the last couple years. (see original Slashdot article on that two years ago here)

And what about the Independent publishers? With the ability for virtually anyone to signup as a "vendor" and self publish a game, what type of impact has the quality of these indie publishers caused on the overall market? Will it bolster influence and growth in the online pdf sales market or will it hurt this enterprise?"