2014年6英语四级阅读段落匹配题真题及答案.docxVIP

2014 年 6 月英语四级阅读段落匹配题真题及答案 The End of the Book? By John Steele Gordon Amazon, by far the largest bookseller in the count ry, reported on May 19 that it is now selling more books i n its electronic Kindle format than in the old paper-and-i nk format. That is remarkable, considering that the Kindle has only been around for four years. E-books now account for 14 percent of all book sales in this country and are i ncreasing far faster than overall book sales. E-book sales are up 146 percent over last year, while hardback sales i ncreased 6 percent and paperbacks decreased 8 percent. Does this spell the doom of the physical book? Cer tainly not immediately, and perhaps not at all. What it do es mean is that the book business will go through a transf ormation in the next decade or so more profound than any i t has seen since Gutenberg introduced printing from moveab le type in the 1450s. Physical books will surely become much rarer in th e marketplace. Mass market paperbacks, which have been dec lining for years anyway, will probably disappear, as will hardbacks for mysteries, thrillers, romance fiction, etc. Such books, which only rarely end up in permanent collect ions either private or public, will probably only be avail able as e-books within a few years. Hardback and trade pap erbacks for serious nonfiction and fiction will surely l ast longer. Perhaps it will become the mark of an author t o reckon with that he or she is still published in hard co py. As for childrens books, who knows? Childrens boo ks are like dog food in that the purchasers are not the co nsumers, so the market (and the marketing) is inherently s trange. For clues to the book’s future, let’s look at so me examples of technological change and see what happened to the old technology. One technology replaces another only because the n ew technology is better, cheaper, or both. Thee greater th e differential, the sooner and more thoroughly the new tec hnology replaces the old. Printing with moveable t