As far as physical books on shelves go—I’m just not terribly concerned about them going away. I think publishing companies are trapped in this mentality where everyone in the office, and everyone among their economic class in Manhattan with their full 3G coverage and broadband access, thinks e-books are taking over the world—because that’s what they see with their own eyes.

You read book blogs, I read book blogs, and we know how endlessly everyone goes on about the Kindle and how much it’s changed their lives. But how many people do you know who actually have Kindles? How many people even buy books off Amazon? Advance galleys of Harry Potter aside, how many people even bother to pirate PDF scans of books the way they do with other digital media like films and music? The figures (and the media bubble) tell me that brick-and-mortar bookshops are collapsing, but that’s only because publishers and booksellers alike are behaving in a way that assumes this is true. Amazon and Apple are counting on making this happen, but plenty of people in the world get on with their lives with no short-lived consumer electronics whatsoever. E-book devices will be big in the same way that HDTVs are big: as a luxury good that purports to change everything, but only because you never hear about the people who can’t afford them or don’t care.