Be afraid, be very afraid!? Actually, I'm not that fearful but it is something to watch. Three news items came across my desk last week. This will take a bit more time than I have now to write about but since I haven't written much of late, I thought I would start.
First an article in the October issue of Vanity Fair by Keith Gessen examines the world of publishing through the story of his friend and college mate who just had a book published with lots of fanfare. The friend is Chad Harbach and his book, The Art Of Fielding, hit the Best Seller list fast. At the end of this very interesting article, Keith observes that Amazon hired David Blum an editor from The Village Voice to be the editor of Kindle Singles. Amazon's attitude is, "The only necessary parts of the business are authors and readers." And with eBooks, Amazon is proceeding to bring readers and authors together without all those messy in-between people.
The second piece of the puzzle that came across my desk was the fact that Amazon wants to start a Netflix type of rental service for eBooks. Whew...what will become of libraries in that situation?
The final piece was the realization that when one "checks out" an eBook for a Kindle from the library the patron is taken out to Amazon.com to complete the transaction. When the loan period is finished for the "library" book, the patron gets an email from Amazon notifying the loan period is up and a suggestion that the patron buy the book from Amazon. And, as Sarah Houghton points out we California librarians are not upholding California privacy principles as our patrons' lending patterns are being tracked by Amazon.com. This was all a surprise since our vendor did not forewarn librarians that Amazon would do this as an exchange for allowing Kindle downloads.
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