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He does have an interesting point that I hadn't considered. If half of all book buyers switched from B&M sales to online/electronic sales, and we assume that the other half of the customers will never do this and that the remaining customers will not be sufficient to support those stores, then we could in fact see a short-term collapse of the publishing industry as most of the customers no longer have a market available to them.
Of course, this isn't specific to e-books as online sales create the same issue in every market.
It also ignores that customers have alternatives that also involve books (such purchasing at multi-purpose stores (Target/Walmart) or online). It's a fairly big leap to assume that the loss of bookstores would lead the population away from buying books.
I wonder if this is the primary concern driving B&N's attempt to bring e-book readers back to the stores...
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