To Kindle or Not to Kindle, that is the question

Kindle, Sony E-reader, digital formats for reading novels. Is it really the way ahead, and will it superceed conventional books? Phoenix Ark hope not, don’t think so, and since Guttenberg, a book has been a thing of beauty, and bookshops wonderful places to be. Yet it’s inevitable that books will transfer, and are doing so rapidly. Perhaps to publishers, but authors too, it is all about price pointing, delaying Kindle and others sales until a book has acheived in the conventional market place. The thing about Kindle, controlled it seems by Amazon, like Sony’s E-reader, is that they are platforms and since folk started going on about the medium being the message, the smart money knows that controling the point of sale is the key. So Kindle becomes a virtual bookshop, where everyone has to turn if the readers are going there. Perhaps in fifty years time we’ll live in sparce, modernist homes, with one ‘machine’ representing a library as vast as the internet. Then perhaps those clever, terrifying technocrats should invent a book that has flipping electronic pages, and a cover that takes on the entire style and design of a novel, almost magically. The one place where that could triumph is in Children’s Books, adding film to the word. But still all those publishers have to believe, as the best Hollywood directors believe, in the importance and power of the storyteller.

1 Comment

Filed under Publishing

One response to “To Kindle or Not to Kindle, that is the question

  1. Kindle will not replace the age old book. There is something about holding a book in your hand, feeling the pages turn at the touch of your fingers, smelling the fragrance of paper (new or old), the comfort of holding a book in your hands as you contemplate the words within.

    I have a kindle and I use it often. I use it for times when I travel and to make presentations but it will never replace the bound treasures that I have in my home and library. If anything it makes me long for the leather clad friends that I have grown up with all the more.

    Kindle will supplement NOT REPLACE.

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