Cover Stories: Amazon's Kindle, Pan Bookshop, Prix de la Fondation Napoléon

Amazon's development of an e-reading device has been the trade's worst-kept secret. Now, within a day of its going on sale in the US, Sony has come up with an "electronic paper" and Dymocks is ready to sell an e-book in Australia. One advantage is that the Kindle is greener than the most friendly of forest-friendly paper – even eco-paper books still need to be trucked, often hundreds of miles, to their destination. The question remains: do we want to spend even more time squinting at a screen? One publisher with privileged access to the Kindle's development told The Independent that Amazon thinks: "If we don't like the Kindle, we won't like any e-reading device, and publishers can stop worrying and get back to books as we have known them." Jeff Bezos and his colleagues in Seattle must be praying they've got it right.

One reason that publishers find it so hard to sell hardbacks is a diminishing pool of independent booksellers able to "hand sell" to customers. Now comes news that, after 32 years, the Pan Bookshop will shut its doors on Fulham Road next year. Owners Pan Macmillan can't really be blamed, as it is exorbitant rents that are driving many retailers out of business. Ironically, at the same time Waterstone's announced that its nearby Old Brompton Road store is to close. Tim Waterstone must be sad to see the end of his first ever shop.

Zut alors – c'est magnifique! A book by a British historian based at UCL has won France's Prix de la Fondation Napoléon. Dr Thomas Munch-Petersen's Defying Napoleon: How Britain Bombarded Copenhagen and Seized the Danish Fleet in 1807, published by Sutton, recounts a largely forgotten episode in Anglo-French history, one in which misleading intelligence planted by the French Emperor played a role in the British attack. The prize was presented in Paris earlier this week by Princess Alix Napoléon, one of the Bonaparte clan.