The Wiki Man
24 October 2009
A fortnightly column on technology and the web
Given that a small percentage of people buy most of the world’s books, even 100,000 Kindles landing under British Christmas trees this year will pose vital questions for the future of publishing. What can you charge for an electronic book ($4-10 seems the current norm)? How much of this money will go to Amazon, which created the Kindle and owns the rights to the Kindle file format? How much will go to the publisher? How much will be lost to piracy? And what about the poor old author (Alexander Waugh, writing in the Literary Review, warns that many writers are at risk of being digitally short-changed)?
On a more cheerful note, could this new device lead to a revival of poetry? To a new era of the short story? Or to novels once again being published in serial form, as with Dickens? Will it salvage the future of newspapers and magazines?
Already, browsing Amazon’s Kindle store in anticipation of what to buy has led to some happy discoveries. The Spectator is already available in Kindle form. So are a few hundred other periodicals, including the TLS, the Telegraph and the New York Times. Ninety P.G. Wodehouse novels and stories can be bought as a bundle for less than $8. A digital King James Bible is about $5. Better still, the works of Dan Brown are currently unavailable.
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Merrie
November 3rd, 2009 11:21am Report this comment>And I respect John Lennon more for saying, ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’, than for being the Walrus.
Uh, actually he was just quoting this from Archy and Mehitabel.
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