"Online retail giant Amazon said that sales of digital books for the Kindle electronic reader have surpassed sales of print books."早前最大的網上書籍零售商Amazon發出了以上的宣布，電子書銷量已超越傳統的印刷書籍。Surpass就是超越。
      Amazon的總裁Jeff Bezos說，這是意料中事，但未有想過會來得這樣快︰
      "We had high hopes(高期望) that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly. We've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years."
      他說驚奇的原因是Amazon售賣印刷書已十五年，賣電子書只有短短四年，而電子書卻後發先至。
     

      電子書方便萬能
      當電子書初出現時，有人已開始預測有一天傳統書籍將會被取代。根據Amazon的數字，這個預測成真的機會似乎越來越高了。不知你是否認同這個想法。若你有試過電子書，不能不同意，相比傳統書籍，它確有優勝的地方。
      首先，從網上購買電子書，可讓你足不出戶便購得想要的書。而網上購買傳統書一般要等一兩個星期才速遞到，而電子書只須下載，快者十多分鐘，書便到手。此外，電子書有很多傳統書籍沒有的方便，例如可用電子bookmark，用手指點某個字，便可得到解釋，連查字典也慳了；而閱讀器亦可同時儲存很多本書等。

      無可取代的特質
      儘管如此，有人仍覺得傳統書籍有電子書永不能取代的特質。專欄作家Andrew Irvine這樣寫道：
　　Of course there are advantages to being able to retrieve countless volumes of electronic information at the touch of a button. But it's important not to confuse retrieving information with reading.
　　(當然可以一按鈕，無窮無盡的電子資訊滾滾而來確是個優點。但找到資料與閱讀不可混為一談。)
因為有些“書”不是用來閱讀的，例如電話簿：
　　Many sources of information are not intended to be read. They're meant to be checked(查) or scanned(快讀), or browsed(瀏覽) or inspected(檢視). They've been created to leaf through(匆匆翻閱), to glance at(掃視), to skim(略讀). No one reads a telephone directory.
　　喜歡閱讀的人永遠都會愛印刷書籍，愛一書在手的感覺、書的氣味，以及它們作為實物的永遠價值。
　　At the top of most people's list is the so-called fondle(撫弄) factor. While reading, most people still prefer the touch and feel and look and smell of the printed page. This is something that's unlikely to change, despite advances in technology. There's also the permanence(永恆性) factor. One advantage traditional books(傳統書籍) have over electronic screens is that a book will still be able to be read decades or even centuries after being printed. This isn't true of any other technology.
      Toby Osborne的The Future of Books: How the World is Changing for Readers and Authors，研究書的未來路向。