Want some preconceptions shattered? Americans love reading books. It may be a backlash against the banality of television or simply an affordable pastime in hard times, but sales of books in the USA have climbed this year (5% so far) just as disposable income and house values have plummeted.

Heading the literary renaissance is Amazon’s $360 (£194) Kindle ebook. This handheld gadget enables readers to store hundreds of novels on a single paperback-sized device and to download new books (from a choice of more than 150,000), newspapers and blogs at the touch of a button. The Seattle-based company has sold an estimated 250,000 Kindles since the device was launched last November; predictions of the reader’s earning power were recently doubled to $1 billion (£535m) by 2010.

The Kindle’s impressive monochrome screen and simple menus make reading easy but it is wireless downloads and low prices that are driving its success. I can subscribe to my local newspaper, the Seattle Times, for just $6 (£3.20) a month, instead of 50 cents (27p) a day for the paper version – and without overloading my recycle bin. Note to Amazon, though: I’d appreciate the virtual paper arriving in time for breakfast rather than brunch.

Rumours abound of two new Kindle devices launching before Christmas. A larger (A4-sized) Kindle should hold a term’s worth of college reading lists, and promises to cut a swathe through university bookshops similar to Amazon’s devastation of community booksellers. Multicoloured slimline ebook readers aimed at children are also on the cards.

If the Kindle is such a winning device, why hasn’t Amazon launched it in Europe? One reason may be that the 3G technology Kindle uses for downloading is incompatible with UK phone networks. Or perhaps British bookworms simply don’t read enough: an Arts Council survey found that only two-thirds of adults in Britain buy books, compared with more than 90% of Americans.

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