{"id":2293,"date":"2008-08-21T21:13:06","date_gmt":"2008-08-22T01:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2293"},"modified":"2008-08-21T21:13:06","modified_gmt":"2008-08-22T01:13:06","slug":"catch-a-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/catch-a-fire","title":{"rendered":"Catch a fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t agree with all of this guy’s points about the future of digital books<\/a> vis a vis the success of the Kindle. I’m optimistic that the presence of the Kindle and other e-readers will help drag book publishing out of the horrifically dysfunctional returnable bookstore model that it’s currently in.<\/p>\n

But I don’t think that book publishing can be directly compared to the recording industry, and I really don’t think it’s advisable to tell publishers, “If you’ll just embrace this DRM-free, digital model, you can get your sales demolished just like the recording industry did. What are you waiting for?”<\/p>\n

I also think Steve Jobs was full of crap when he said that Apple wouldn’t develop an e-reader because\u00c2\u00a0 “Americans don’t read.” I think he recognized that Amazon was already in position as the store of choice, and that meant Apple wouldn’t be able to create an iTunes store for books. No store, no device.<\/p>\n

I’m still enjoying the heck out of my Kindle, but I’m also bummed that the new Pevear\/Volokhonsky translation of War & Peace<\/a>\"\" is selling for $20, rather than the $9.99 that they usually price new hardcovers. Grr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t agree with all of this guy’s points about the future of digital books vis a vis the success of the Kindle. I’m optimistic that the presence of the Kindle and other e-readers will help drag book publishing out of the horrifically dysfunctional returnable bookstore model that it’s currently in. But I don’t think … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Catch a fire”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4],"tags":[127,272,273],"class_list":["post-2293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business","category-literature","tag-kindle","tag-pevear","tag-volokhonsky"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-AZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3519,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/kindleicious","url_meta":{"origin":2293,"position":0},"title":"Kindleicious","author":"Gil","date":"February 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"To celebrate the arrival of my new Kindle (I sold my first-gen model for $270 on Amazon last week), here are a bunch of articles about e-book pricing and why publishers are scared crapless by the example of Apple and iTunes: Kassia Kroszer, who writes wonderfully about this stuff on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2023,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/kin-and-kindle","url_meta":{"origin":2293,"position":1},"title":"Kin and Kindle","author":"Gil","date":"April 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Once upon a time, Robin Williams said, \"Cocaine is God's way of telling you that you have too much money.\" This week I bought a Kindle. It costs $399 (but I had $150 in gift-credit, so I pretended it only cost $250), can download books wirelessly from Amazon, is perfectly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000FI73MA","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3998,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/bea-0-fer","url_meta":{"origin":2293,"position":2},"title":"BEA 0-fer","author":"Gil","date":"June 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This NYTimes article on Book Expo America was pretty funny. On the one hand, e-books on the Amazon Kindle are ridiculed by Tina Brown for costing \"that paltry, pitiful sum\" of $9.99. On the other hand, Sherman Alexie is a complete douchebag: At a panel of authors speaking mainly to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "0-fer"","block_context":{"text":"0-fer","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/0-fer"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2104,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/kindle-part-1","url_meta":{"origin":2293,"position":3},"title":"Kindle, part 1","author":"Gil","date":"June 18, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Ahoy, dear readers! I'm awfully busy at the BIO show in San Diego. But rather than leave you without your daily dose of my ramblings, I thought I'd post this e-mail I wrote a pal in response to his query of, \"How do you like your Kindle?\" I have more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000FI73MA","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2833,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/me-and-e","url_meta":{"origin":2293,"position":4},"title":"Me and e","author":"Gil","date":"November 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Virginia Heffernan has a nice piece in the NYT Magazine about Amazon's Kindle e-reader. The biggest complaints I hear about the Kindle from tech geeks is that it needs to have an color touchscreen with a high-powered browser, cellphone service and maybe a camera. Which is to say, they miss\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Design"","block_context":{"text":"Design","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/design"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2121,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-july-4-2008","url_meta":{"origin":2293,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading: July 4, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"July 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy Independence Day, dear (American) readers! Now let's blow some stuff up! Just kidding; I've decided we're going with all book-related links this week, because that's what's piling up in my RSS feed. One year on field study in Africa. What books do you take along? (I'd load up my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2294,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293\/revisions\/2294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}