I would probably go crazy with the instant gratification factor of the Kindle. Knowing I have to wait a few days for a book I see on line gives me pause, and I can consider whether I could get it from the library instead.

IMO, most online print sales are deliberate — you have a list of books, you go online, enter titles, buy books. Not so much room for impulse there.

Much of my online purchases (whether e-book or tree-book) start with Amazon recommendations – as in, I’m bored, so I’ll see if there’s anything new in that list, and then buy (though not usually from Amazon). I think lots of online stores offer just as much opportunity for browsing as a bricks-and-mortar store. And since I hate going to the mall, I rarely browse there, especially since it’s so unlikely they’ll have everything I might want in stock.

As opposed to wandering down the book aisle at Sam’s or Walmart and having books just happen to fall into my cart…

But maybe that’s just the way I think.

Print book sales have historically relied on impulse buys at point of purchase — online sales still don’t account for a huge percentage of print numbers, since that model doesn’t allow for the same sort of browsing experience as wandering through a brick-and-mortar store, or “just happening” to toss a book or three into your cart with the Tide and the frozen vegies. IMO, most online print sales are deliberate — you have a list of books, you go online, enter titles, buy books. Not so much room for impulse there.

Ebooks are another matter entirely, inextricably wedded to the online experience. Those readers are far more apt to browse online, tossing ebooks into their “carts” with the same gleeful abandon as the print book diehard tosses Harlequins and Avons into hers. The Kindle and its ilk only make those gottahaveitnow purchases even easier.

Truthfully, even with the Kindle, I think we’re in for a fairly long transitional period as we switch from primarily paper to primarily digital, for all the reasons discussed here and elsewhere. However, I’m not sure why an additional means of reading books would decrease overall sales. If anything, if a book is available in both Kindle edition and print, it should increase sales, especially from those readers who’re into it for the convenience factor, anyway. How it could be seen as a threat is beyond me.

The larger, more successful epublishers have realized they need both print and e-formats to maximize sales, by giving readers more options; so the only way I would see sales slipping would be for publishers to abandon print altogether in favor of going all digital. That, at present, would be the bad idea to end all bad ideas. But perhaps the Kindle is the device to finally take the e-revolution from niche to mainstream?

The next few years should be very telling.

But then I’ve never understood the doomsday people who say that e-readers signal the end to books.