Print, RIP?

Jeff Bezos is interviewed in this Sunday's NYT Magazine, and he pretty much predicts the demise of books as we now know them. I wonder. Bay area booksellers like William Stout and University Press Books say that Amazon is what's killing them, turning their stores into Mr. Bezos' showroom. I can see the point of digital books if the content is inherently ephemeral - like textbooks that are constantly revised. There's a big push on now by Murdoch and others to grab digital space for magazines, but again I'd make a distinction between those you toss away and those you don't. There's Gourmet, of course, a mag with such a devoted audience that it would probably follow it into any medium. Watching Gourmet in use in the kitchen, I picture a lot of greased-spattered Kindles. (In the interview, Bezos claims to read in the bath, his Kindle safely inside a Ziplok bag. Sounds like Martha Stewart.)