Every time I think I've found a sane statement about eBooks from the publishing world, I come to find I was mistaken.

Oh, Robert Mize in today's Shelf Awareness, you started out so strong. You're absolutely right to say that the comparison of eBooks to mp3s is a weak one! Books aren't like music. How clever, how wise! And the reasons you outline as to why certain people like eBooks*, why, that's within earshot of accurate!

But like the clever kid who suddenly reverts to his true age, thinking only within his specific knowledge of the world as though nothing could be outside his realm of experience, Mize, you take a bad turn**.

Let me tear this apart in a brief and ordered fashion:

"At music stores, you went to get what you had already heard or your favorite artist's newest album. At bookstores, you go to see what is available by both your favorite writers and other writers whom you have never heard of and to see books of local interest. A well-informed staff is of little use in a music store and rarely available at corporate chains. The well-informed staff is the greatest competitive advantage that independent bookstores have."

1. People who love music do not, in my experience go to a music store to get only what they already know. Like you in a bookstore, we music lovers seek out music which is familiar, new, and local, all at once.

2. As to the "well-informed staff" that you feel is so important to bookstores and so lacking in music stores, my god man! Have you never seen High Fidelity? That's not (entirely) a fantasy, you know. That exists.

3. Of little use? Of little use?! Bah, I cannot teach such a fool.

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*Commuters, jetsetters, heavy readers, those with medical issues, techno-junkies, and for textbooks. I fall into three of these categories yet I'm not sure I want a Kindle/Sony Reader.

**And that's sidestepping the fact that you pull out that old gem of a logical fallacy, "Readers love curling up with a book! You can't take it to the beach or into the bath!" Yeah, 'cause no one takes technology to the beach, and tons of people still take baths.