Opinion: Will Kindle Kill the Book?

(Aug. 27) -- To the delight of eager e-book readers, Amazon's new Kindle started shipping this week. But as the popularity of e-books climbs, so does the corresponding anxiety among book lovers about the future of traditional hardcover or paperback books.

To some readers, the announcement by Amazon.com that Kindle sales have outstripped hardcover sales by nearly 50 percent sounds like the death knell of the "real" book -- that physical object they love to hold in their hands and shelve in their homes. Amazon head Jeff Bezos has also said, in an interview in USA Today, that he believes e-books will soon outstrip paperback sales as well. To further complicate things, bricks-and-mortar leader Barnes & Noble may soon be for sale, and Amazon may buy the company.

This product photo provided by amazon.com Inc., shows the new Kindle 3 reader.

Amazon.com/AP

A Kindle 3 reader.

For traditional book readers, this doesn't sound like great news. It sounds scary. But devotees of paper books should take heart. Things are not nearly as bad as they seem.

Indeed, today's publishers are convinced that e-books will stimulate paper book sales, not diminish them. Increasingly, as part of the launch of a new book, publishers briefly offer it as a free download to one or more of the e-readers, such as the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony Reader or the iPad. According to TechDirt, free e-books increase sales of both paper books and e-books up to 20 times the sales numbers of books not promoted this way.

What's more, the big successes in electronic book sales are all linked to paper books. At least to date, books that are published solely in electronic form have not come close to the sales figures of books published in multiple formats.

Readers aren't the only ones uneasy about these developments. Authors naturally worry that free books mean lost sales, but so far, the opposite seems to be true. Bloggers such as KindleObsessed post lists of books offered for free. Smart e-book users snap up those books and then, if they like them, review them online. Titles fly around the Internet, capturing attention on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Borders. Obscurity is a book's worst enemy; publicity -- of any kind -- is a book's friend. The one thing we know in the publishing business is that word-of-mouth sells books better than any advertising or promotion, and free e-books do a powerful job of starting the "buzz" that can give a book its chance.

In addition, lively e-book sales can make up for the loss of independent booksellers, which have been going out of business at an alarming rate since the book distribution system changed in the 1990s. The big-box stores have pushed a great number of the "indies" out of towns and neighborhoods, and those failures threaten the future of books much more seriously than do e-books.

The best-seller book-selling model -- widely used by the big book chains -- works against most books, making it nearly impossible for a midlist author to gain, and hold on to, shelf space. This model alarms publishers and diminishes the chances of new and different authors being published. E-book sales should be considered good news for readers who want a wide variety of choices beyond just the latest blockbuster or the top 10 best-sellers sold on grocery store shelves.

Readers who can't imagine reading on an electronic device instead of from a traditional book -- those who don't want to give up their enjoyment of the weight and the smell of a book, and the familiar feel of paper under their fingers -- can rest easy.

At least for now.

A two-time Endeavour Award winner, Louise Marley is the author of Mozart's Blood, a historical novel based on the opera singer Teresa Saporiti, and works of science fiction, fantasy and young adult fantasy. Read her blog on Red Room.