There is a certain inevitability that ebook sales have now overtaken paperback sales on Amazon’s US site. Amazon’s

Kindle 2 is so light and so cheap that it’s easy to see why people have rushed to buy it. Though I’m still not keen on the design of the Kindle, it is a vast improvement on its predecessor and certainly tolerable. Beyond the device itself, Amazon has done a great job of rolling out Kindle apps, ensuring that people like me-who have an iPad but not a Kindle can still join in the fun. Once you’re into the Kindle ecosystem, Amazon locks you in tightly-just as Apple does with its iTunes/ iPod ecosystem. It’s so easy to buy from Amazon’s store and the books are so cheap that it’s not worth the effort of going elsewhere.

       While I remain opposed to Amazon’s DRM (数字版权管理)-indeed, I’m opposed to DRM on any ebooks-I have to admit

that the implementation is so smooth that most Kindle users won’t care at all that their ebooks can’t be moved to other

devices.

　　The ebook trend is nowhere near peaking. Over the next five years we can expect to see more and more readers move away from printed books and pick up ebooks instead. But I don’t think that will mean the death of the printed book.

　　There are some who prefer printed books. They like having shelves filled with books they’ve read and books they plan to read; they like the feel of the book in their hands and the different weights and typefaces and layouts of different titles. In other words, they like the physical form of the book almost as much as the words it contains.

　　I can sympathize with those people. As I wrote earlier this week, my ideal situation would be for publishers to bundle

e-books with printed ones-in much the same way that film studio DVDs with digital copies of films. There’s no reason to think that lovers of printed books will change their minds. There will undoubtedly be fewer of them as time goes by because more people will grow up with ebooks and spend little time with printed ones. However, just as there are people who love vinyl records(黑胶唱片), even if they were born well into the CD era, there will still be a dedicated minority who love physical books.

　　Since there are fewer of these people, that will mean fewer bookshops and higher prices for printed books but I don’t think the picture is entirely bleak. There is scope for smaller print runs of lavishly designed printed books and bookshops aimed at book lovers, rather than the Stieg Larsson-reading masses. With mainstream readers out of the printed book market,

booklovers might even find they get a better experience.