Saul Bellow Hanging Man

Light reading

In the departure lounge at Heathrow Airport of people are reading. There is nothing particularly unusual about the scene - we read all the time on buses, trains and planes. What emerges here is that many of these readers are not glued or stapled tatty cardboard glossy or even those big promotions Airport format, but the e-books.

It's all part of what is dubbed the "Kindle Summer" - which was the first e-books have sold strongly, marking a turning point for editing. And if you have recently packed for a beach holiday, as I did it last week, you will understand the benefits.Why take a heavy stack of bound books that eat into your precious luggage when you can take an e-reader stocked with thousands of pounds? Gone is the mad dash to the bookstore at the airport trying to find something

In April, the Association of American Publishers has announced that the first e-books have surpassed all other traditional formats, and since the beginning of April, customers were able to buy Kindle books Amazon.co.uk on hardcover books at a rate of more than two to one."E-book sales are rising, and rising faster than previously expected, led largely by the Kindle," said Philip Jones, deputy editor of the bookseller. "Penguin in July reported that its e-book overall first-half sales rose 14 percent, while in the United Kingdom agreed with the general consensus that e-books now account for about 6 percent of their trade / consumer business. We expect e-books to be about 10 percent by the end of the year. "

So what does all this mean? Are we to read more? E-books are taking over from physical books? Cardboard are about to go the way of vinyl?And where does it leave the readers, writers and publishers?

There are now several large platforms of e-books. The Amazon Kindle is the market leader, but Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble Nook, Waterstones and retailers such as Kobo have all expanded the horizons of e-books in the last two years. While each platform has its own unique experience, which is selling particularly well on all devices are thrillers, memoirs misery and breathtaking popular fiction.

Yet while readers are turning to digital books more than ever, this change was not easy for publishers.The music industry struggled through the impact of Napster and the rise of the MP3 player, but the edition - one of the most traditional of all the creative industries - has so far remained relatively resistant to change.

Tarot and Quotes Part 2

© James Ricklef and James Ricklef's Tarot Blog, 2010, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited, so if you'd like to use anything on this site, contact me. Excerpts and links must be accompanied by full and clear credit to James Ricklef and James Ricklef's Tarot Blog, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Saul Bellow journal

The Noble savage

Conversations with Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow Against the Grain

Saul Bellow, a critical essay