To e- or not to e-?

        That is the question facing millions of book-lovers worldwide: Will you buy an e-reader to read books electronically?
       "Never!" cry those devoted to the physical book.
       "Already!" cry millions who own a Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, iPad, Kobo, or other e-reader facilitators.
        It's early yet but some see an unusual tech trend - led by mature users, 40 and above.
        And as in the non-e universe, women buy more books, men newspapers and magazines.
       Electronic texts have existed since at least 1971, when Michael Hart began the Gutenberg Project - and you could read them, too, if you could work a multistory, several-tonne machine called a computer.
        For decades, people have been talking about the portable e-reader, and its time may finally be here.
        Sony debuted its Reader in 2006, and since then has sold 10 million e-books, according to Chris Smythe, director of the Reader Store at Sony.
        In November 2007 came Kindle by Amazon.
        About 1.5 million Kindles had sold by last December - and the world took note when Amazon said that on Christmas Day, it sold more e-books than physical books, for the first time.
        According to the Association of American Publishers, 2009 e-book sales (in a year when plain old book sales ebbed 1.8 per cent) increased 176.6 per cent over 2008, to $US169.5 million ($A193.36 million).
        E-sales rocketed to $US117.8 million ($A134.38 million) by April alone, this year.
        Americans now own an estimated 2.8 million e-readers - not counting computers, still the most common kind.
        At fewer than 3 per cent of all books sold, e-books are still a small corner of the publishing market. But such rapid growth suggests that a new age of reading has begun.
        Makers of e-books are stingy with their numbers, and industry watchdogs disagree, but some say a large proportion of early e-book owners - up to 66 per cent in some surveys - are older than 40, with a "sweet spot" in the 35-to-54 range.
        Smythe of Sony said that "as of now, the whole e-book industry was trending older", and Tony Astarita, vice president of digital products at Barnes & Noble, said that "our initial adoption was skewed to heavy readers and an older demographic".
        Astarita expects, however, that as e-book prices moderate, "we're going to see a more general audience".
        US social media survey data show women are 11 per cent more likely than men to say they read an e-book, and men are 20 per cent more likely to have read a magazine and 19 per cent more likely to have read a newspaper,
        E-book users tend to earn more than $US100,000 ($A114,000) a year, be university-educated, and be very web and social-media savvy.
         The e-Top 10 looks pretty much like the non-e.
        Last week, the top five at Sony Reader Store featured books by James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, and Stieg Larsson.
        Larsson's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy was 1-3 on the Kindle Top 100, and Evanovich and Patterson were in the top 10.
        After initial resistance, and still wrestling with pricing, royalties, and rights, publishers are moving to surf the e-wave.
        All majors offer at least some of their books in e-form.
        One leader is Harlequin, renowned for its romances: It claims to be the first to render all its books electronic.
        The iPad is one potential game-changer. Another is the Google Editions eBook Store, scheduled to go live any moment now, Google-big, Google-strong, to square off against Amazon and other e-vendors.
        Meantime, one local Kindle user just downloaded the vast, six-volume unabridged Three Musketeers for $US.99c.
        Hard to curl up by the fire with an e-reader, but still, there they are, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and d'Artagnan.
        Print or e-, they're still all for one, one for all.