Reading, out of our minds

"Out of Print", a documentary to be seen in a few film festivals this summer, casts doubt on a successful future for reading, believing the internet has changed the practice forever. Calling "digital natives" "digital doofuses" pretty much sums up part of the movies' message: young people's brains are being Googled into nonexistance. Not so fast, I say. How do we know? My very upbeat feeling is that electronic reading is more public than private, as in the past (wonderfully designed to be shared in smaller chunks). And any electronic book today is like abstract art, to be defined more completely by the viewer (reader) than the painter (author). That's not bad, or dumb, or disappointing -- its just different. “Out of Print” screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival May 1, and now moves on to the Seattle International Film Festival on May 22 and 23, and the New Hope Film Festival in July. Odd to see a film about the revolution in reading. But then again, how else to capture the revolution, when the revolution in reading is all in people's heads. We've got to get out of our minds, which is hard to do.

Amazon in any medium

Jason Merkowski's new book "Burning the Page" is where you should be able to read all about Amazon. Except it's not exactly a tell-all, according to BookBusiness. And there are no inside scoops. Instead, and in my mind, so much better, you get an ex-executive who still knows that books are special, in any medium. Here are some of the sentences, according to Laura Hazard Owen writing for Paid Content: “Books are priceless,” “Books can inspire us toward greatness,” “Books hold the repository of human knowledge, and then some,” “Reading is an act of bathyspheric descent into the depths of an inky-black ocean,” “For me, it really is about books. They’re not commodities, but soulful voices that actually speak to you”. In my book, well said Jason Merkowski.

Nook sales aside, the tsunami continues

What does it matter that Barnes & Noble had bad holiday sales? Does that mean books will mean less to people in the future? No. You can read all about the disappointing B&N digital device sales (Nook sales down 12.6 percent) in various places on the web right now. (Here's a pretty good one: http://www.idealog.com/) And what does it matter that digital content sales were disappointing (even though they were up: only 13 percent from last year). Does that mean that fewer people are reading books electronically? No. Only strict market watchers and investment people care about these short-term holiday sales figures. Those of us who believe in the progressive/revolutionary nature of digital readers and content know that the tsunami-like transition to electronic reading continues unabated. About one third of Americans now have read a book on a digital device. And there are by some accounts about 2 million ebooks out there. And every day more ebooks are sold by Amazon than print books. And the big news, as I've reported here before, is how the world is poised to adopt ereaders. There will be a big push of digital readers into South America, China, India and Europe this year.