NYTimes

"Amazon said, it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition."

"According to the Association of American Publishers, e-book sales have quadrupled this year through May."

but...is the U.S. recession causing folks to buy less new books? borrow more from libraries? are less people buying/reading books? My gut tells me it is not a consumer preference shift but a precipitate issue, the folks that are buying new are liking eBooks...but the aggregate has not changed.

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NYTIMES

"If the number of brick-and-mortar stores drops, publishers fear that sales will go along with it. Some worry that large bookstores will go the way of the record stores that shut down when the music business went digital.

“The shift from the physical to the digital book can pick up some of the economic slack, but it can’t pick up the loss that is created when you don’t have the customers browsing the displays,” said Laurence J. Kirshbaum, a literary agent. “We need people going into stores and seeing a book they didn’t know existed and buying it.” "