Now that I'm retired I am reading more books than ever before and I buy them either new or used or from libraries' sales. I love to dip into books I've previously read and sometimes reread older books. I spend more that $25 a week on books - more or less. Books are not dead and never will be.

Thank you for the re-broadcast. Very informative-- even with the overkill country song. It was nice hearing so many different points of view and some challenges from Brooke.

I believe that this vision of the future of books would be truly disastrous. First, if books were only published according to immediate subscription, where would the wonderful experience of picking up a random book in a bookstore or library and finding a new treasure? Secondly, we will soon have to accept the fact that paper survives far longer than electronics. Ebooks will be unreadable and useless long before the equivalent paper book.

What a horrible idea.

what was that rap song they played with the line "way past the margin" twas so dope!

Great bit. I heard the bumper music a remake of the Beatles Paperback writer and loved it. Can anyone tell me who composed it? It was done in a blue grass style. Thank you.

Enjoyed this rebroadcast, however I have one question - was there some significance to using the song 'Toyland' to underscore the last story (the story on pulping books)? Isn't that a Christmas song? Am I missing something?

When Neil Gaiman comments on the "Charles Dickens" method of selling books, he speaks from great experience.

I am a 45 year-old, long time comic book fan who has followed Gaiman on the page and in cyberspace for years. My son is a 20 year-old gamer who had only a passing idea who Gaiman is, and that from the movie adaptation of his book Coraline.

But the best shared experience the two of us had at this year's Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo was a charity reading that Gaiman did for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. To hear him reading the wonderful poems, essays, and short stories was the highlight of a really great weekend.

Thanks for rebroadcasting this. Dr Kirschner has recently weighed in on the iPad as well: http://chronicle.com/article/My-iPad-Day/65839/