“Maybe the NYC publishing folks will pay attention to e-books now!” Daniel Oran wrote me after his beta-test novel became a best-seller at Amazon’s Kindle store.
Little did he know. None other than Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, the bible of the publishing industry, is already full of Kindle love. It isn’t that she’s ditching her paper library and thinks that E is the optimal format for every book. But her new weakness is for “the pixel scroller” rather than the proverbial page-turner alone.
Oh no!
So what happens if Sara, shown in a TBD video, interviewing Christopher Buckley, author of Boomsday, loses her $400 e-book machine, not just a $25 hardback? No hypothetical, alas. If you find a Kindle with an already-drained battery—well-used during Sara’s second airplane fight with her new love—that just might be hers. E-mail me and I’ll take it from there. Promise. I won’t ask you to send the Kindle to me.
“Of course,” Sara writes, “I had some real, live books with me, too, so I was not reading-challenged all weekend. Still, I missed my Kindle, its ease, its readability without glasses, its ability to provide me with books I never got around to buying in print—think Snow Flower and the Secret Fan—but was loving in the downloadable format. At first I thought I might get it back—will anybody even know what this is? I wondered about whatever plane-cleaner might find it—but it’s been a week now, and LAX hasn’t called.”
Risk: Lost books, not just a lost box
Hey, Sara. My sympathy. But at least your e-books currently await you in your Amazon book locker if you buy a second Kindle.
Of course, for me, as I’ve noted in the TeleBlog and PW, the question isn’t just the possibility of losing the box but of losing easy access to Kindle-format books in the future. If Sara sees and buys a better e-book reader from Sony or another company next year, she won’t be able to transfer her existing digital library. Nor will Kindle books work on the mobile phone that a PW reader suggested that Sara use for e-booking for now. There are other issues. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has even been quoted as saying in the past that Amazon won’t necessarily be in the book business forever. Furthermore, Amazon ditched the Adobe format, stranding people who thought they could trust the company’s book lockers forever and who perhaps missed out on e-mail notifications. Here’s to the cause of a standard e-book format, with interoperable DRM, if, alas, publishers keep insisting on “protection”—however farcical it can be in an era when it’s so easy to scan and post old-fashioned books!
Despite my eBabel and DRM concerns, however, I rejoice that the Kindle is reeling in new e-book fans like Sara—with its impressive positives, such as the iPod-simple downloading and buying of e-books. And meanwhile I hope that Sara’s Kindle will turn up soon. Perhaps, if Kindles don’t have anti-theft precautions built in, Amazon can add them, along with a label on the underside for “Return me to…” information.
Better sport than I’d have been
For now, Sara is being a much better sport about her missing machine than I’d have been. She writes that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ought to be pleased over the prospect of e-purchases by the new owner. “Apparently, whoever found my Kindle did know what it was and was thrilled to have it,” Sara concludes her essay. “As for me, I’m trying to look on the bright side by conjuring the warm and fuzzy feeling you sometimes get when you pass along a favorite book to a friend. Call me crazy, but I’m convinced my Kindle has found itself a good, bookish home.”
