There's one thing that scares me about the coming death of the physical books. When I was a kid there were a lot of books at home. Frequently, some book would catch my attention and I would read it (or try to read it, sometimes I was too young to understand some of them). It was not that I was always actively looking for something to read, it was just that books, being physical and visible all the time, were basically impossible to ignore. The fact that they <i>looked</i> different was important, in my opinion, to make me want to look at them more closely.<p>I don't see how that experience can be replicated today with electronic books, for my kids. I have bought a lot of books for the kindle since I got one, and it kinds of ticks me that Im actually depriving my kids of the real bookshelf experience I enjoyed so much, by not buying the physical version.<p>(sorry for the poor english)
I think it's much easier to impulse buy e-books on the Kindle than it is to buy a paperback. You get instant gratification -- you see a book you want, pay for it, and you get it without having to travel anywhere.<p>This is especially potent if you're already reading a series; just go buy the next book in the series. Sometimes I'll find out about a book and then just grab my Kindle to get the book before I forget about it.<p>Instant purchase, instant gratification!
I would be sold on the Kindle if I could read technical books easily. Over the past few years I have built quiet a collection of (legal) books in PDF format, only for them to be unreadable on my Kindle and impossible to convert to another format without damaging code, graphs, equations, etc.<p>For novels, it's a fantastic bit of kit, but outside of that the dead tree format isn't so dead.
While I always felt that this was inevitable, I think this went much faster than what I would have anticipated.<p>I guess the advantages of ebooks (immediate availability, much easier purchase process) have helped to convert people more quickly and made the converts buy more books in general (certainly happened to me).<p>Now let's hope that this success is seen by other industries too (Console Gaming, Movies) where they would still do everything possible to have you buy physical media.
I hope this spurs publishers on to making electronic versions (not necessarily Kindle) as standard. I for one have no interest in dead tree books anymore. I read serial works (typically fiction) on an ebook reader or my iPad and my iPad is fantastic for technical books.<p>Sadly the range of Kindle books is still too small as the publishers (pretty much every content distributor actually) is stuck in the dark ages.
I've been following this for some time, if you want more information on it this is one of the best blogs out there detailing numbers between paper/e-publishing:<p><a href="http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/</a>
I don't understand this -- I buy ebooks because it's too complicated to buy physical books from my country. If it would be as convenient as the US I would buy mostly paperback and just for a select few the ebook version.
I wonder if Amazon is counting all the free downloads? I know I've purchased one Kindle book, but downloaded maybe 20 free ones from Amazon.<p>I'll be more impressed when the e-book revenue catches paperbacks.
Part of me doesn't want to believe it. Mainly because ebooks are too restrictive (can't resell) and overpriced for my liking.<p>Also, I might be nitpicking, but it seems like ebooks only beat 'paperback books'. In that article they make a distinction between 'paperback books' and 'hardcovers'. So ebook sales haven't surpassed all physical paper books yet. The title is correct, but could be misleading if you assume 'paperback' is just generic physical book.
How could it be any other way? The Kindle starts with no books. People already own paperbacks. To fill up a Kindle requires buying Kindle books. To fill up a bookshelf requires nothing as most people who read already have full bookshelves.
The problem for me is that e-books cost the same as paperbacks. And personally I like to have a copy to share. With the ability to share and lend books alleviates some of this issue. But I still think the publishers are holding it back.
Interestingly, net sales increased by 40% in 2010. Amazon is still close to being a not-for-profit organization, but they appear to be growing faster than Google.