Monday was a day for the history books ? if those will even exist in the future.Amazon.com, one of the nation?s largest booksellers, announced Monday that for the last three months, sales of books for its e-reader, the Kindle, outnumbered sales of hardcover books.

In that time, Amazon said, it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition.

The pace of change is quickening, too, Amazon said. In the last four weeks sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcover copies. Amazon has 630,000 Kindle books, a small fraction of the millions of books sold on the site.

Book lovers mourning the demise of hardcover books with their heft and their musty smell need a reality check, said Mike Shatzkin, founder and chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, which advises book publishers on digital change. ?This was a day that was going to come, a day that had to come,? he said. He predicts that within a decade, fewer than 25 percent of all books sold will be print versions.

Product summary

THE GOOD: Slimmer and sleeker looking than the original Kindle; large library of tens of thousands of e-books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs via Amazon's familiar online store; built-in free wireless "Whispernet" data network--no PC needed; built-in keyboard for notes and navigation; a faster processor speeds up the device; with 2GB of internal memory, it's capable of storing 1,500 electronic books; font size is adjustable; improved battery life; displays image files and plays MP3 and AAC audio; compatible with Windows and Mac machines; new Text-to-Speech feature allows you to have text read aloud.

THE BAD: No expansion slot for adding more memory or accessing files; files such as PDFs and Word documents aren't natively supported and need to be converted at 10 cents a pop by Amazon; no protective carrying case included; battery is sealed into the device and isn't removable; hardware and content is still too expensive; lacks the support for electronic library loans and free ePub public-domain books available on competing Sony Reader models.

THE BOTTOM LINE: While it's short of perfection--and remains fairly pricey--the Amazon Kindle 2's improved design, built-in wireless capabilities, and user-friendly interface keep it atop the e-book reader heap in the U.S. now

?

See more information here

Amazon introduced a next-generation Kindle DX e-reader today, one that not only comes with a better display contrast but also a lower price tag - down from $489 to $379 now.