The Kindle- Upper Intermediate reading.
I've been resisting the Kindle for a long time, now it seems I am living in the past. A kindle is an electronic book that can hold over 1000 titles. On my way to work I often see my fellow commuters reading from these mini computers whilst I struggle to turn the pages of my heavy 800 page book! However, one of my favourite things in my room is my overflowing bookshelf, and I would hate for that to be empty! Read this article about the Kindle and then complete the gaps with the correct past tense verbs.
Sales of digital e-books have outstripped real books for the first time, according to Amazon.
Four years after the launch of electronic novels, the firm _1_ it has sold 105 e-books for every 100 printed books over the past six weeks.
While e-book sales have previously outsold hardback books, never before have they _2_ sales of all books, in both hardback and paperback forms.
The books can be read on a range of electronic devices - from Kindles to computers, iPods, iPhones, iPads and BlackBerrys.
Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon.com, said it was a shock that sales had taken hold of the market so quickly.
He said: 'Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books.
'We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never _3_ it would happen this quickly - we've been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years.'
2011 appears, so far, to have been a crucial year for e-book sales. Since January Amazon has _4_ more than three times as many Kindle books as it did in the same period last year.
The figures, which are for its U.S. website, are not just limited to cases where both formats are available - they include printed books for which there is no electronic edition.
Free e-books have also not been taken into account, for the sake of fairness.
Outside the U.S., figures are also massively on the rise.
In the U.K., where Amazon's Kindle store_5_ only a year ago, e-books now outsell hardbacks at a ratio of two-to-one.
Amazon began selling hardcover and paperback books in July 1995.
Twelve years later it _6_ e-books and by July 2010 Kindle book sales had surpassed sales of hardbacks.
Six months later Kindle books began outselling paperbacks and now the format is more popular than all text books put together.
The Kindle bookstore offers more than 950,000 books for sale as well as more than 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books.
