[单项选择]
Can Tony Blair Save the World of Books
At the beginning of A Journey, Tony Blair boasts that he has "the soul of a rebel". Last week, he made good on that boast by conducting a gravity-defying act of literary presumption--pubhshing a hardback of some 720 pages, priced at ~25, tricked out with index, acknowledgments and 32 pages of photographic plates.
According to Cathy Rentzenbrink, manager of the Richmond Waterstone’s: "These sales are brilliant and really exciting. You don’t often have customers almost breaking down the door to buy a book, but Blair is totally outselling Mandelson. I’ve not seen anything this big since Harry Potter or Dan Brown. This looks like the Christmas book of the year." She adds: "It’s very rare for a hardback to outsell a future paperback, but this might be one of those exceptions." Rentzenbrink says she does not know its Amazon discount, or if there’s a significant ebook and audiobook sale. What matters
A. The death of printing industry.
B. The popularity of hardback books.
C. The prosperity of paper book business.
D. The paper book business is collapsing.