The U.S. Postal Service announced that for the first time, it was handling more junk mail than first class mail. Although first class mail is reportedly its financial backbone, I kind of thought this milestone had been passed a long time ago. We certainly get more junk mail than first class mail, and I use maybe one stamp a month.
Also recently, Amazon announced that for the first time, it was selling more e-books than real books. This did surprise me, even though this seemed in the works for years. I didn't think it would happen this soon.
I suspect its the Kindle, which did catch on, and which Amazon has been promoting relentlessly. Apparently the Kindle has been a hit especially with women, and since women buy most of the books, I guess this makes sense.
I'd have to see a breakdown of titles being sold via ebook versus real book to be sure, but I suspect that a lot of the books sold for Kindle and such devices are the kind you'd just as soon throw away when you're finished--when you know whodunit, or who done whom, or such equally disposable nonfiction. So in that sense, there may not yet be a mortal threat to real books.
I suppose it was a bit of a surprise to me for the same reason the Postal Service story wasn't. I don't use first class mail much anymore, but I don't have a Kindle, and don't want one. At least not yet. I still prize the physicality of books, and besides, ebooks aren't any cheaper really. Plus there's something weird about buying a book and not really owning it--it still resides somehow on somebody else's cloud, where Amazon or somebody can decide who gets to read it, how and when and even whether. No thanks. Too modren for me.
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