The danger of the Kindle (and its kin)

I'm a bit of a throwback when it comes to paper and to books. I still like documents, I miss letters (and occasionally though rarely even write one). I like postage stamps (commemoratives, especially old ones) and first-day covers. I'm even a notary public - I like all that arcana. Obviously I also love electronic communication, as I keep this and my other blog as well as a range of other online communications and could not live without my two e-mail accounts and have always loved abbreviations and efficiencies in my writing and my note-taking (have devleoped a personal shorthand from years of work as a reporter). So I can see the beauty and allure of Kindle - millions of books you can download instantly, easy to carry, clickable notes, nice to read at night, and so on. Yet I will probably never adopt one and I have great fears for what Kindles and their kin will do to books and to reading. I imagine that as Kindles grow in popularity, someday bookstores may go the way of record shops and libraries go the way of Blockbuster. It's true that music and movies have continued to thrive under the new, electronic technologies, but I'm not so sure about books, already threatened. I fear that the number of books "published" will or may increase - but the # actually printed will fall dramatically. Can you imagine Random House, for example, having a spring catalog listing 300 novels, all bought and owned and controlled by RH but none actually printed or distributed or advertised or reviewed? These books will never be read - just "owned" by the corporation, on the off chance that one of a thousand will bring profit. E-publishing will cost virtually nothing. Meanwhile, RH and all the others will actually publish maybe 5 or 10 books a season - all by well-known established authors and celebrities. These books will be all you will see in a store, they in a review, anywhere. More and more reader will read fewer and fewer books - indies may survive in a niche, but the publishing industry will become much like the movie industry, one blockbuster after another, with the same stars, the same formula, each having to earn out its millions of investment, over-hyped, unimaginative, devoid of risk and style and intelligence. Kindle is aptly named - a little stick of wood that can ignite the vast book-burning bonfire.