How will the Amazon Kindle ebook viewer affect the book printing business

I watched the Charlie Rose Jeff Bezos interview last night. ebooks are nothing new, but this is the first time an industry giant has made such a huge effort to shift the book business from print to digital (as Bezos said video and music have been digital for a long time with CDs and DVDs, years before Internet distribution, but reading a book has remained an analog experience with ink on paper... the analog-like disappearance of the very tactile bound book making way fr the experience of discovering what is printed on the page was also an interesting observation to think about.)

The strongest feature of the Kindle is amazon's backing with 100 of the current 112 NY times bestsellers and 88,000 books available on the device out of the gate. But it also brings some technological breakthroughs to the game: besides the EVDO wireless purchasing of books directly to the device, 10 oz lightweight, and nightly newspaper pushes to the device, it features an "electronic liquid ink" screen which promises much easier readability than a traditional backlit 96-120 dpi computer screen:

A color screen isn't yet available though, and with the screen's small size coffee table, travel, and photographic books have nothing to fear, yet.

On one hand, using such a device you lose the tactile elements of a printed book, the paper, binding, cover, dust jacket, finishes, embossing, etc. But you gain a tremendous immediacy, the ability to carry your book library with you everywhere, an economic even-footing between short-run and long-run books, no concerns over run-length or stock levels, etc.

Will devices such as the Kindle dramatically impact the print business in th next 3-5 or 5-10 years?

Once "liquid ink" computer screens like this come about, will finishes and the analog finality of having a book set in type be enough to set printed books apart from their electronic counterparts?

Or is the true ink-on-paper book printing business going to to see a dramatic downsizing as the CD stamping and record cutting businesses have given way to the mp3 and ipod in the music business...

 

Four years later, amazon now reports that kindle books now outsell hardbound books. Amazon UK said 2:1 even.

It would be interesting to see a breakdown by book category of how book printing is affected.

Also has the immediacy of kindle book buying resulted in people sampling many more books than before, or is it closer to a 1:1 kindle sale:book not printed?