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a) It wasn't an American subject
b) It wasn't another book on the Tiger
c) It wasn't as Anglo-centered as many other books.
While I agree that these are serious factors, I think that there are many reasons why most publishers of such books are often risk averse.
The biggest and most pernicious of these in my opinion is the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia has done a number of things to the state of information dissemination, but most importantly, it has established the monetary value of research at zero. This is clearly stated in its mission:
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The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge.
(Above emphasis added)
Publishers of print, or even electronic research works can only be risk averse when presented with the likely situation that the salient points of any work they publish of broad interest will no doubt appear on one of Wikimedia's cluster of pages almost immediately. If it doesn't, its likely because the amount of information provided through Wikipedia or another one of the Foundation's pages provides the basic information sought by the vast majority of people interested in a topic. The unholy alliance between Google and Wikimedia, which makes it so that in the vast majority of cases the Wikipedia entry on a topic is the first search return, fuels this, whether this is actually an intended feature of the Panda algorithm or not.
Similarly, there is little value for aspiring authors to do the grunt work when presented with the same situation. Wikipedia offers them no outlet either, however, in having guidelines that prevent the use of so-called "original research." This reinforces the bad elements of Wikimedia, by basically requiring users to harvest from sources published by others. Wikipedia is sort of like the Wal-Mart of the internet, similarly responsible for edging out independent websites that used to provide new information. Unlike Wal-Mart, which will continue to have both a market and a source for its wares, Wikipedia has understandably plateaued as the availability of new ready information slows. Most updates on "well cited" pages rely heavily on news items now.
Independent websites used to provide a perfect outlet for authors who could not find a publisher for more obscure topics. Online self-publishing such as Lulu has also been a boon. However, between Wikimedia and Scribd, this has become of debatable economic viability. I used to update Wikipedia myself as a way of trying to put out obscure and new information, but eventually gave up when I found out that I couldn't feed myself and I'd have to spend hours just trying to convince other self righteous people that they were wrong (and who knows who was really wrong). I'm also teetering on the point of losing my current job for reasons that are directly attributable to the Google-Wikimedia monopoly.
As for more obscure topics, I've actually found the miniature wargaming community to be receptive both to the modeling and the history aspects, but again, its a relatively small niche community. I've found success in publishing items targeted toward it, but its not a day job replacement.
Also, with regards to the original question, I think its not so much a matter of reading, as reading comprehension. Every day I see examples where it seems that while people are reading something, the content is not getting across. Reading comprehension seems to be the lost skill. Its also what I use to explain why on so many forums where the same questions get asked repeatedly.
