Amazon’s Secret Business Plan

In a Boston Globe interview, memoirist Elif Batuman offered a new picture of book-buying today:

The Kindle changed my reading habits, because I now buy books pretty much only when I’m drunk, and late at night.

Okay, I’m sure she’s joking, at least in part. But her joke notes how the combination of digital texts and wireless delivery means that shopping for literature has lost almost all its “friction”—the effort of physically going to a store, carrying away the product, and even interacting with sales clerks. The only obstacle to buying books now is money.