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Nicholas Carr on the prospects for print publications.

Ron Charles talks about the challenges of trying to adapt print-book reader behaviors to e-readers.

America's obsession with digital tablets is driving a boon in e-book reading, a new survey shows, a trend that is dampening the appeal of printed books and shaking the centuries-old publishing business.

Many new releases have design elements usually reserved for special occasions - deckle edges, colored endpapers, high-quality paper and exquisite jackets that push the creative boundaries of bookmaking. If e-books are about ease and expedience, the publishers reason, then print books need to be about physical beauty and the pleasures of owning, not just reading.

Amazon started life as a book retailer, and as a book retailer they made books cheaper. Then they were pioneers in the e-book industry where they made books cheaper. Their recently announced plan to give readers free e-book copies of books they buy in physical form doesn't make books cheaper per se, but it does give readers greater value for their book-buying dollar. This is all great stuff. But not everyone agrees. Emily Gould complains that "When ebooks and pbooks are bundled, the ebooks are sold at a loss. That's authors', publishers' and, associatively, non-AMZN retailers' loss" and "frustrating we have to keep explaining that ebook production is not free. digital objects are not made by elves."

An interesting hypothesis on how B&N is faring in the digital age.

If electronic books are the future-literary volumes optimized for the Kindle, the Sony Reader, the iPhone-how come two of this fall's hottest books won't be available in digital form anytime soon?

Blog entry about a study that looked at the differences between readers' experiences reading on a screen versus reading hard-copy.

Something like what we were talking about earlier this week in class....