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Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

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Mark the date: May 19, 2011 ends the reign of King Book.

May 19, 2011 /

Everyone was expecting it, but still – wasn’t it supposed to happen a little later in history? Thursday ends the reign of the Paper King, supplanted by its young descendent, Prince eBook.

Amazon, the big book retailer (they sell small ones, too), announced on Thursday that sales of electronic books, those digital computer files that are read on the screens of such devices as the Kindle and the Nook, officially surpassed the sales of regular paper editions.

In the future, when the generations of little e-readers look back on the occasion, they’ll note that the actual date was April 1, 2011, when Amazon.com sales of e-books began to outpace physical editions at the rate of 105 to 100 copies sold. Some Kindle books are provided without charge, but Amazon says those figures are not included in the statistics, otherwise the ratio would be even higher.

“Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. “We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly.”

Amazon has been selling the old-fashioned books for fifteen years, and the electronic kind for just over three.

I’ve yet to even hold one in my hands.

That’s probably a good thing.

It’s a Lookbook, by hook or crook.

May 16, 2011 /

I think I may have just been slapped in the face. I’m not certain about the actual location of the hit, but I’m still sort-of stinging from a customer’s question today.

She wondered what I knew about the Look, her new electronic book reader.

“The Nook, you mean,” I answered.

“No,” she replied. “It’s a Lookbook. Do you have wi-fi here?”

I felt like I had been drawn into some sort of science fiction time warp. Here I am with my stacks and stacks of books – those old paper ones – on shelves, perfectly content in my work-a-day world, when I am suddenly barraged by this techno-robotic-electronic invasion.

“Lookbook?” I asked, thinking she must be mistaking the name of her device. I was at the laptop, and sure enough after a quick Google, I learned there is some other morphed product that stores books in a plastic-cased battery-operated device. Look. The Lookbook.

I found it listed as available at Walmart and CVS Pharmacies. Color!

150 Free Books!

Wireless book reader.

“Do you have wi-fi?” she asked again. “I was at Panera Bread and I couldn’t get the connection to work at all.”

“Why do you need wi-fi to read your Lookbook?” I asked. “I thought the books were stored on the device.”

“I was trying to download more of my free books,” she said. “I don’t have wi-fi at home.”

Ahhhhhhh. Now I see. She needed a wireless internet connection, since the Look has no cable-connect ability. She was out scouring the town for an internet wi-fi hotspot that would let her download, and came to – naturally, I suppose – the book store.

She was hoping that I had wireless internet so she could use my connection to download free books onto her electronic reader.

Slap!

Ouch. That smarts.

Not only did she not want to buy a book, she wanted to use my internet to collect her free electronic books. I kept smiling.

“No,” I said, finally. “Sorry.”

After she left I was thinking about wi-fi and remembered I had a hi-fi stereo once. Traded it for an 8-track.

But I can’t tell him ‘I told you so…’

May 13, 2011 / / 0 Comments

He wasn’t always right, but my father was a smart fellow. He used words in conversation with me as a kid that I had to secretly look up later in his dictionary to understand what it was he meant.

That’s probably why I still remember having the answer once, when he wondered aloud on a thing.

I was seven or eight years old and we were watching a televised baseball game. During an intentional walk by the pitcher, Ray J. questioned the need to throw the pitches. Why not just send the batter down to first and forget the four consecutive pitches that no one could possibly touch with the bat?

“Maybe,” I said, “sometimes the throw goes wild.”

It’s a really clear memory for me: my tentative response, worried while he thought over my idea that some things taken for granted don’t always work out as planned.

He considered the possibility for a moment, and gave a young kid a great deal of satisfaction.

“I guess you’re right,” he admitted, and that was enough for me.

It’s taken most of forty years to back me up, but on Wednesday, LA Angels pitcher Kevin Jepsen was trying to deliver a toss for an intentional walk and sent the pitch clear to the back screen.

It was exactly the scenario I had envisioned when my father wondered aloud: there was a man on third base at the time.

Alexei Ramirez was able to score easily, and the White Sox wound up winning the game 6-4, with the Angels choking up a three-run eighth inning lead.

“I threw it about 10 feet too high,” Jepsen said. “Just sailed it. Sometimes on an intentional walk, you can take it too easy.”

In other words – the things we take for granted, don’t always work out like they should – which was exactly what I was trying to tell my dad, oh – so many years ago.

He would have known the answer anyway, had he given it a moment’s thought. Like I said, he was one smart fellow.

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