McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: Kindle

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.

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a darn, cad-dash-it.

May 5, 2011 /

It was 75 years ago this month that those immortal words (or a similar phrase) were uttered by Rhett Butler in Margaret Mitchell’s lengthy antebellum romance, Gone with the Wind. Given that the book is set in the Deep South, her title is pretty close to the mark.

They are still working just to get started with the cleanup from the wind damage from the tornado-packing thunderstorms that raked the southern US. Tara, Scarlett O’Hara’s plantation home will have survived, along with Mitchell’s book title, which has become one of the post-twister phrases painted on rubble where homes used to be located.

For the 60th anniversary of the book’s release, publishers whipped up a fancy hardback edition as a commemorative item. Now, on the 75th year after the debut, stores can offer a paperback printed for the occasion – or that commemorative digital download with special gold-flecked text that glimmers in direct sunlight.

I’m kidding about that part.

It is obvious that the big sellers care more about the new electronic books than the standard, don’t-ever-need-a-battery type. With the exception of James Patterson, a suspense novelist who cranks out a new title every forty minutes, there are no television ads for published works. Even the Kindle and Nook don’t advertise titles, just devices.

Barnes and Noble never had a commercial before. Now, they’re talking about how the book lives on, or some other marketing phrase. Ironically, the ads will eventually contribute to the death of the book as we know it.

It’s a matter of time before the paper and ink items will become as curious and collectible as 45rpm vinyl records or as obscure as eight-track music tape cartridges (already most of you don’t recall those…).

I’m asked my opinion about whether the Kindle and the Nook will catch on, and – saluting Margaret Mitchell on the anniversary of her life’s work – I reply, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a…”

The Book.

December 13, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Will it be around in another twenty years? People talk about their electronic readers and send me clipped newspaper articles about the demise of books and bookstores. For those of us who love books, the idea is laughable.

It isn’t just stick-in-the-mud thinking here. I’m all for technology, even if I can’t drive and phone at the same time. Give me gigabytes on flash drives. Upload your digital photos to me. Text yo’ daddy.

A digital representation of a book, though – isn’t a book. Kindle me this: for the price of your black and white screen, plastic-housed text presenter, you could have purchased a first edition, leather-bound, marble-papered classic, dating to a time before the US Civil War.

Granted, you probably won’t drag it into bed with you and snuggle under the quilt to read it. That’s what those glow-in-the-dark Kindle-Nook-iPad eReaders are for. In fact, since they don’t have a cover or a dustjacket, you can download those bodice-ripping romance novels you’ve pined for all these years, but had too much pride to carry around. On the Kindle, no one knows what you’re skimming.

Books – if they do disappear – will never completely vanish. They’ll be preserved just like the vintage models kept up by old car buffs who gather with their restored British sportscars and Detroit muscle cars. We booklovers will park our volumes on Sunday afternoons in the Burger Street parking lot, cranking up the classical music while sitting in canvas director’s chairs.

“Ah!” we’ll say, as we wander around the asphalt lot. “Look at the leather spine on that beauty! Unrestored, too! They just don’t make books like that anymore…”

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