Yeah the author is being deliberately dense. To make a point I guess.
The idea that e-books are licenses is self-serving for the publishing industry. Since they can't control distribution of an e-book after it leaves their site, they want legal controls. So they can sell the book more than once.
I don’t know what sort of actions would fall under your definition of trying to kill e-books. But from my (admittedly unsophisticated) point of view, some publishers seem willing to at least hamstring them if it will net them more traditional sales.
That's almost identical to how movie companies restrict rentals (as opposed to sales) of videos for a period after movies are released, but nobody would claim that this means movie companies are trying to "kill digital video rentals."
At the very least, "trying to kill e-books" would mean that publishers were actually attempting to convince people to buy paper books instead of e-books, which is not something they are doing. Moreover, when I first read the title of this article, I thought that publishers were actually considering ceasing publication of ebooks, which is definitely not what is being described.
Someone mentioned Special Topics in Calamity Physics, so I looked it up. MSRP for the paperback is apparently $18 (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297621/special-topi... on Amazon the Kindle version is $13.99 while the paperback is $11.39. On the other hand, Barnes and Noble has the NOOK version for $13.99 and the paperback for $16.20, so maybe Amazon is trying to kill e-readers.
