[soulfuldog]

Those who want an e-ink reader and want to keep upgrading every year or two is a niche market. The number of people who have an eink device and are happy to continue using it but will only upgrade as and when required is probably far higher.

This latter group will include some who are not avid readers, but then again, there are avid readers who are amongst those who are happy to read on tablets and/or phones (especially when you can buy half-decent tablets so cheaply nowadays) either exclusively or along with their eink device. Then of course there are those who don't want to read anything other than physical books.

So I don't see why anyone would be surprised that ereaders aren't selling quite so well, and the fact that Waterstones are no longer stocking Kindle's is barely even newsworthy since they probably never sold that many even when they first stocked them.

Unless they go down the route of DRM-free, single format ebooks, I don't see the ebook market ever overtaking traditional books anyway. The only thing that has changed in the last few years is that there aren't many new eink buyers for the market to attract, and while there are a lot more cheap ebooks available, they are indies, whereas the price of mass-market best sellers has been creeping up.