e-books ready for mainstream?

Mike Elgan is convinced that e-books are poised to take over traditional publishing. Personally I don't think the writing is quite on the wall yet (no pun intended). Latest developments may show that we are moving towards this though. I especially like the comments that young people (I'm not one of them anymore) actually read more than previous generations - just not from paper.

This second article from the Silicon Valley Insider does a little cloud math to show that the NY Times could buy every loyal subscriber an e-book reader (the Amazon Kindle) for less than it takes to publish their dead-tree version. However they don't claim that the Times should do this, they just want to show the economics.