CEO Jeff Bezos watched a master for years. He marveled when the master took over digital music files with a cool new player called the iPod. Later, Bezos became sick with envy while the master waited -- patient and amused -- as the public themselves invented and named a spin-off product, providing the master -- gratis -- with a guaranteed market for the iPhone long before any design appeared on paper.
Bezos yearned to adapt such Jobsian techniques to the sale of books and to recast those sales in the same way iThings had changed MP3 downloads and then put Internet access in your pocket.
Of course, Bezos' company, Amazon.com, had been selling e-books for years. The trouble was, no one bought them. But what if, Bezos wondered, a specially formatted device enabled hard core book junkies -- the kind who might splash out $359 for a luxury reader -- to buy books on impulse?
What if such a junkie in any corner of the country could suddenly feed his or her habit just by pressing a button? Presto! A New York bookstore at your fingertips whether you're on the beach in La Jolla or sipping a latte in the passenger seat during that long commute from Yehuppitzville with reliable, old Mr. Excitement.
Readers are curious people, after all. They want to know things. Readers often buy two or three reasonably priced 'shelf books' for every title they actually read. To confess, I sometimes buy books about the history of sugar or shipping-containers. I don't read them, but I do tend to buy them if they look interesting and if they seem like a good bargain at the time.
E-books are a good bargain. A brand new title will cost you about $10. You save money and you don't kill trees. After you've bought 30 or so books, the device pays for itself (never mind that you've bought a lot of books you won't read). Furthermore, writers get a greater percentage of the list price of some e-books than they do with print books.
Feel good about that. Writers are always experiencing hard times.
There are some disadvantages, of course. Picture books, which I love, don't work very well in e-formats. So don't download Greystone's beautiful The Last Wild Wolves, HarperCollins charming Treasury Picture Book Classics, the Museum of New Mexico's Richard Diebenkorn in New Mexico or the Montreal Museum of Fine Art's Cuba: Art and History from 1868.'
In particular, you need to stay away from the extremely beautiful and reasonably priced (well, it's $200, but look at what you get!) Diego Rivera: The Complete Murals which is a big book for people who love big paintings by heavy men. When I first saw it in Green Apple Books in San Francisco at Christmas, I thought it wasn't a book as much as it was a evening's activity, a date, an excuse for seduction: 'Uh...hi! Look, you have to come over and see this truly wonderful book. It's unique. I can't describe it. But you'll love it. Bring some wine.'
If, however, you are a simple book junkie whose needs can be sated in black and white, Amazon's Kindle is for you with only one exception. You can no longer have it.
No. Sorry! Supplies of the first generation Kindle "gave out" shortly before Hannukah and Christmas. Amazon won't say this was bad planning on their part, but they promise the Kindle 2.0 -- streamlined and iPod slender -- some time very soon.
-- Aw...is it ready, yet?
Yes. Today.
Guessimates place last year's sales (machines only) at about 258,000 units ($90 million gross), and project another $1.2 billion in total Kindle sales (machines and books) during the coming year. (This seems like a lot, but is only 4% of Amazon's projected total sales, so they can afford a little risk).
Steve Jobs is now out sick, but Jeff Bezos has learned a great deal from him. People in Japan are writing novels on their cellphones. Meanwhile Bezos sees dust gathering on oldschool print publishers while more and more writers short-circuit the submission process and follow up self-publishing with long-tail Internet marketing as though they were Indie bands mixing new tunes.
More important, Bezos sees the success of his major competitor, the iPhone's Stanza, so Amazon will now offer its ebooks to cellphone users.
Print is in its dotage, and the day of the ebook has finally arrived.
That said, I must confess that as an aging baby-boomer I'm reluctant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, either as author or reader. I'm one of those Luddites who still enjoys the look and feel-- the physical object itself--that is a regular print book. I like the heft of a solid hardcover, the feel of turning pages, how the printed word looks on paper. I like seeing the books I'm currently reading in a small pile on my bedside table. I like knowing that the books I've authored myself are right now perhaps on somebody else's bedside table, or being read at lunch in a busy diner, or being gift-wrapped to give as a birthday present.
I know that the future of publishing is self-publishing, and that the medium will be digital. I know that marketing (or should I say, e-marketing) a book will be the author's e-responsibility. Yet despite this, I look at the books on my big, old-fashioned book case with a powerful sense of appreciation and gratitude.
Yet, as we know, the future comes, the wheel keeps turning...and it's an e-future.
I don't think e books will replace books entirely the way that TV will never replace radio. (Imagine a world without NPR). Print is an art and there will be beautiful print editions, I would guess, until people stop buying handwoven rugs and raku pots.
I do love physical books. But as a working writer imagine a having a whole library including newspapers and magazines (and a bookstore too) in your briefcase. Ready to boldly go wherever the hell it is you're going for as long as you're gone. The convenience of it is overwhelming, not to mention the fact that e-books are cheaper.
Damn! All you need is a beach or a park bench and you're good to go.
Lots of people, however, actually do buy gift or coffee table books largely for their appearance. Like it or not, most people do judge books by their covers, and why not? I too, love beautiful books. Of course, this won't work with e-books. That's why only true book junkies are still vulnerable to the impulsive appeal of an interesting e-book. Fortunately for Amazon.com, there are lots --about 300, 000 so far-- of book junkies who are devoted to the habit of reading, who own Kindles and who buy books.
Incidentally, you can also read HuffPo on your Kindle.