The Kindle and the book market: Passion vs. numbers
“The book world has always had an invisible asset that makes up for what it lacks in outsize revenue and profits: the passionate attachment that its authors, editors and most frequent customers have to books themselves. Indeed, in this respect, avid book readers resemble avid Mac users.” - From New York Times columnist Randy Stross’s Kindle review, which, by the way, is positive and covers familiar territory. Also see
Details: Stross addresses Steve Jobs’ observation that people don’t read books—check out the numbers in the column. Books, it seems, are less of a niche product than Macs, a point that some TeleBlog readers, I think, have made already.
Still, I continue to agree with the most recent NEA report: books aren’t as important in American life as in past years. Let’s hope that the Kindle and other e-book machines can help change that.
Meanwhile Stross’s basic verdict on the K-machine is a big thumbs-up; in fact, he can’t pry it away from his wife. Hmm. I wonder if he’s tried the XO. I can’t wait until someone comes up with the right software to make the XO iPod-simple; er, Kindle-simple—or else comes up with the right variant of the existing machine. (Thanks, Jason E.)
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