By RHYS TRANTER [A Piece of Monologue] – As its consumer base continues to grow, online mail-order companies have become big business. Since 1995, the Amazon founder has been featured on the cover of Time Magazine and sells everything from light fixtures to baby clothes. A UK-based online bookstore, The Book Depository, offers browsers the opportunity to see consumer orders as they are being made, via an interactive online map. Even the traditional bookstore, from Waterstones to Oxfam, holds a strong online presence – with many deeming to provide computer terminals in-store for browsing customers. Up until recently, the only thing that has remained static is the books themselves – but perhaps not for long.

The last five years have witnessed an increase in demand for electronic books and periodicals. It has been driven, in part, by the creation of a new kind of consumer, ecologically-aware and in constant search of convenience: even those of us who remain skeptical, even hostile, to the e-book are probably tempted by some kind of non-print format from time to time. But it is also worth considering the status of the book as a printed commodity item in a struggling global economy.

Publishers from Penguin to Quercus all ensure a strong connection to the online literary community. Faber and Faber publish an interactive online blog to keep readers up-to-date on news and events. And, among independent publishers, there are companies who use online subscription as a major source of income: Electric Literature is a promising, and sustainable, example of this. As reader habits are changing, so is our definition of the book, and indeed of literature itself.

Amazon and Apple are now rivals in a new kind of Christmas chart, with the Kindle and the iPad both competing for digital readership dominance. And as contemporary debate over the future of the printed word continues, Robert Darnton has released The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future.

Continued at A Piece of Monologue | More Chronicle & Notices.