I have been taking advantage of this development to read some interesting e-books from a variety of genres and authors.  And over the next few days I want to take a moment to offer my quick impressions of these shorter works.

First up is a e-book that was actually free: The Flinch by Julien Smith.

A book so important we refuse to charge for it.

Julien Smith has delivered a surprise, a confrontation, a book that will push you, scare you and possibly stick with you for years to come.

The idea is simple: your flinch mechanism can save your life. It short circuits the conscious mind and allows you to pull back and avoid danger faster than you can even imagine it’s there.

But what if danger is exactly what you need?

What if facing the flinch is the one best way to get what you want?

Here’s a chance to read the book everyone will be talking about, before they do.

What are you afraid of? Here’s how to find out.

I saw this on Twitter and decided to check it out. After all, it was free.  It turned out to be a sort of digital pep talk.  It has an interesting hook and some useful challenges even if it is somewhat repetitive.

I think your reaction depends on a lot on your worldview, perspective, place in life, etc. Reading the reviews you can see that some people thought it was BS while others found it very helpful. I think it is a bit of both. If you need a pep talk to get you out of your rut and start thinking about achieving the things you have always claimed you would, this can be a helpful book.

I think it can be a useful way to realize that success isn’t going to be easy for most people and if you are constantly hesitating and avoiding risk you are unlikely to achieve all that much.

On the other hand there is a lot of repetition and pop psychology that will turn a lot of folks off.

It is not the greatest thing I have ever read but I think it was a helpful wake up call of sorts for me heading into 2012.

But again, it doesn’t cost a thing so what it the risk?

Related articles

• Flinch Harder (chrisbrogan.com)
• The Flinch – A Dangerous Read (cc-chapman.com)

Cover via Amazon

Miljenko Williams ruminates on Kindle and being engrossed in a good read:

But what I most like about the whole Kindle experience is that in some intangible and inexplicable way it has managed to use digital technologies to turn me away from hypertextuality.

I love the Internet – always will do, of course.  But Amazon’s Kindle has reminded me of the simple pleasure of burying oneself in a text – a pleasure I had lost in an online maze of endless restless clicking.

A simple pleasure indeed.

That wondrous permission we readers sometimes choose to offer up to those deserving writers who with their wisdom regale us and reward us.

That beautiful moment when we choose to allow an author the time and space to lead us through their world.

That is why Amazon’s Kindle is worth so very much more than its technology.

All I can says is, yup. I offered my thoughts along similar lines a few days ago.

And so it was with trepidation that I read last week that Amazon.com announced that for the first time, sales of titles for its Kindle e-readers outpaced those of hardcover books. Now, I’m no luddite when it comes to the advance of technology, but I hope I’m not wrong in predicting that the surge in the sale of e-books is merely a fad and not a trend As we grow more and more into a technologically based society, we are losing touch with the sensible world around us. This push-button lifestyle brings us further and further away from simple pleasures; those that may be enjoyed even without electricity.

…

As did my father when I was a little girl, I encourage children to read: read anything that catches their fancy and if Kindles are the only means to this end, then fine. But my suggestion to the young is to pick up a real book, love it, and reread it until its pages are yellow and dog-eared and then pass it on to someone else. Then none of you will have cause to pause when someone asks you that popular question: If you had three books to take with you should you ever be stranded on a deserted island, what would they be?

Mark Goldblatt, author of Sloth, responds from the perspective of a reader and an author. He concludes it is not an either or situation:

As unsettling as such innovations may seem, they needn’t encroach on the experience of traditional readers — not even those seduced by the siren song of a Nook, Kindle or iPad. The option of sight reading, of scanning down the page line by line, without using the cursor, will always remain. But the range of new possibilities is sure to impact how writers write; many will write with an e-book specifically in mind. They will become orchestrators as well as wordsmiths — deciding, in the case of Sloth, what to annotate, but, in the future, deciding what to score, what to illustrate and what to animate. The results will be hybrids… not unlike the way today’s graphic novels are hybrids of traditional novels and comic books.

Not surprisingly, I am in the both/and camp. I love my Kindle and its conveinence.  But I also love books qua books. Just one example, my wife and I love to buy classic children’s books at used book stores and library sales because of both the classic stories and their great illustrations.  And lest all the authors out there are worried, yes we enjoy brand new children’s books for similar reasons.  This is something that can’t be replicated on a Kindle – at least right now.

I don’t know how the various markets will work themselves out but I am not afraid that art and illustration and the joys of books as physical objects will disappear.

The Wall Street Journal ponders this question:

Books are having their iPod moment this holiday season. But buyer beware: It could also turn out to be an eight-track moment.

While e-reading devices were once considered a hobby for early adopters, Justin Timberlake is now pitching one on prime-time TV commercials for Sony Corp. Meanwhile, Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle e-reading device has become its top-selling product of any kind. Forrester Research estimates 900,000 e-readers will sell in the U.S. in November and December.

But e-reader buyers may be sinking cash into a technology that could become obsolete. While the shiny glass-and-metal reading gadgets offer some whiz-bang features like wirelessly downloading thousands of books, many also restrict the book-reading experience in ways that trusty paperbacks haven’t, such as limiting lending to a friend. E-reader technology is changing fast, and manufacturers are aiming to address the devices’ drawbacks.

Yes, the WSJ brings us the hard hitting journalism that tells us that if you don’t have disposable income and/or aren’t a gadget person you may not want to spend hundreds of dollars on a dedicated e-reader!

“If you have the disposable income and love technology—not books—you should get a dedicated e-reader,” says Bob LiVolsi, the founder of BooksOnBoard, the largest independent e-book store. But other people might be better-off repurposing an old laptop or spending $300 on a cheap laptop known as a netbook to use for reading. “It will give you a lot more functionality, and better leverages the family income,” he says.

Wow! I never would have figured that out myself. To be fair, the article does go on to offer some contrasting opinions on the pros and cons of various devices.

But I find this debate tiresome in some ways.

As I have sad on numerous occasions there are a number of reasons why e-books are here to stay:

• If you read a lot of books and are on the go a e-reader is an incredible convenience.  hundreds of books – and access to more books in seconds – with only the size and weight of a trade paperback.  This is a no turning back type of luxary.
• Those without the space for a vast library will appreciate having a book collection without the space issues.
• Being able to access a book in 60 seconds is pretty sweet, BTW. Find out about a book you want to read? No more ordering and waiting or driving to the book store.  Click and you are reading it.

These seem like obvious reasons why people will want e-books and e-readers. Does this mean that the Kindle or the Sony or the longed for Apple Tablet will be around forever in the same form they are today? Of course not.

Is the price point too high for many people? Sure.  But given what people spend on phones and other accessories it is not ridiculously so. Are there features that consumers want and are not currently available? Yes.

I fail to see how any of this makes e-readers akin to the eight-track tape players (and even if they are is that so bad?).  Technology evolves a little fast these days and people have adapted accordingly. I am sure the format and feature battles will shake out with winners and losers and some early adapters might regret their choices – this is neither unexpected nor a tragedy.

Netbook computers are cheap and widely available to be sure.  But I don’t see myself using one to read books. For me, and many readers I would guess, there is something important about just reading the text in a “book-like” way – the dedicated aspect of it appeals to me.

I have enjoyed my Kindle(1) immesely (it was a Christmas gift) and don’t feel like I was giving technology that is on the verge of being obsolete. If cirsumstances change maybe I will updgrade or buy a device that isn’t even available right now.  But in the meantime I will continue to enjoy my e-reader for the reasons listed above. And as noted years worth of enjoyment is not a wasted investment in a failed or superseded technology.

If the business and publishing folks want to freak out about how this whole thing will sort out, fine. But can we quite pretending that these e-readers are anything but a great development for readers who want and need them?

But I found Nicholson Baker‘s New Yorker essay incredibly tiresome and rather disingenuous.  Baker spends 6,000 words saying what is rather obvious to anyone who has looked into the Kindle: if you read books for their typogrpahy, illustrations or other visual elements – books as physical objects with all that entails – then the Kindle (like most ebook readers) is not for you.  Oh, and lots of books are not available yet.

Clearly, for Baker reading is a very physical and visual activity.  He wants certain things from a book and the Kindle doesn’t give him what he wants.  Fair enough.  I still love a well designed book and certainly find Kindle’s handling of illustrations problematic.

But Baker completely ignores why the vast majority (at least I suspect) of Kindle owners enjoy using it.  Here are a couple of issue the Baker basically misses:

1. A library on the go.  If you frequently travel and love to read Kindle is a lifesaver.  You can have a library of books while only carrying something the size of a trade paperback.  So many critics seem to miss this very basic point.  Can they not see how handy it is to have a huge selection of books plus magazines and newspapers at your fingertips without lugging them all around with you?  This is not a question of art but one of practicality.
2. Instant gratification.  Baker mentions this in passing but doesn’t explore it.  It is incredibly convenient to decide you want to read a book and start doing so 60 seconds later.  Why is it so hard to see how awesome this is? Finish the first book in a series and want to start the next?  With Kindle you can do so without even getting up.  It was the Amazon store and the Whispernet that really gave the Kindle the buzz.  Again, not aesthetics but convenience.
3. Sometimes it is about the words.  The fundamental problem Baker has with the Kindle is that books are clearly more than mere words to him.  He derisively describes Kindle books as “a grouping of words in front of your eyes for your private use with the aid of an electronic display device approved by Amazon.”  Sure, but sometimes that is all I need.  In fiction all I often need is the story.  The way the author creates a world out of words.  I don’t need illustrations or a book cover or a certain typography, font, type of paper, etc.  I just want to read the story.  The same is true of non-fiction.  I just want the information – the argument, or the history, or the descriptions. I have found reading the Kindle a great way to get what I want from certain books without the need for a physical copy to lug around or to take up more space in my house. It is really that simple.

It doesn’t bother me that Baker doesn’t like the Kindle.  And I think he makes a few valid points – even if they are hardly insightful or unique.  What I found rather silly is the verbose and snide way he goes about making these arguments.

Yes, we get it.  Some people hate Amazon.  Yes, the iPhone is superior to every other device. Yes, Kindle is propietary. Yes, the Kindle doesn’t handle graphics very well.  Yes, the Kindle isn’t a work of art.  Yes, yes, yes.  I get it.

My response? So what? That is not why I have one.  I fail to see why it was necessary to pen 6,000 words to rehash this rather tired cultural argument.

I don’t know if the Kindle will revolutionize books but I am happy just to take advantage of the convenience it provides.

Perhaps that is just too mundane for Baker but it works for me.

I have just begun to catch up with some blog posts on The Amazon Kindle, Sherman Alexie, and the future of publishing.

I haven’t followed the kerfuffle in detail, but it started with this:

At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices “elitist” and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, “I wanted to hit her.”

Ed Champion decided to get a better handle on exactly what Alexie meant and actual got a much more nuanced response.

Now, as a Kindle owner I am not offended by the term “elitist” because I am actually in favor of elitism when properly understood and because I understand that this is an expensive gadget. But I did find the claims interesting.  So I followed some links and tried to get a handle on the arguments.

Since I don’t work in publishing, and I am not an author, I am not going to speak to the larger issues of digital rights or the impact of e-books on writers income, etc. Instead, allow me a little rant from the consumer’s perspective.

First off, let me just say that I find this reaction very puzzling:

Why do you consider the Kindle “elitist?”

I consider the Kindle elitist because it’s too expensive. I also consider it elitist because, right now, one company is making all the rules. I am also worried about Jeff Bezos’ comments about wanting to change the way we read books. That’s rather imperial. Having grown up poor, I’m also highly aware that there’s always a massive technology gap between rich and poor kids. I haven’t yet heard what Amazon plans to do about this potential technology gap. And that’s a vital question considering that Bezos wants to change the way we read books. How does he plan to change the way that poor kids read books? How does he plan to make sure that poor kids have access to the technology? Poor kids all over the country don’t have access to current textbooks, so will they have access to Kindle?

For the sake of argument let’s grant him the price issue.  The only reason I own a Kindle is because it was a gift.  I get the it’s too expensive part.

But the rest of it seems bizarre to me.  Is Jeff Bezos required to figure out the socio-economic, political, and cultural ramifications of the Kindle?  The guy is trying to sell things.  And are you not allowed to build and sell technology unless you have a plan to insure poor kids have access to it?  This whole thing strikes me a caricature of politically correct thinking.  The Amazon Kindle is a threat to poor kids reading habits!!!! What?

This reads to me like a complex argument built to prop up an emotional reaction.  He likes old fashioned books – the Kindle and Amazon seems like a threat to that so he digs his feet in and says “No!”

Alexie seems unable to comprehend that the vast majority of people don’t think this way.  People don’t think about sweeping issue of how technology impacts society.  People think about what helps them or gives them joy.

I read a lot of books. I read books for pleasure, books for work, and books for personal growth.  I read magazines and newspapers too.  The Kindle makes reading more convenient because:

- I can carry a wide variety of books and magazines in one small lightweight device.

- My subscriptions follow me electronically and don’t pile up at home.

- If I need something to read I can get it instantly.

- I can make notes and add highlights (and now access those on the web).

Why is it hard for people to see this?  If you are heavy reader who travels very much at all the Kindle is a lifesaver.

I ride the bus, or take my scooter, to the office to work.  Only having to grab the Kindle is great.  It not only saves the pain in my shoulder that would be involved in carry all of this, and saves me the trouble of having to remember which books to grab, but I can even listen to some nice background music instead of the chatter and noise around me.

And what I find so hilarious is that Alexie’s complaints are elitism dressed up as egalitarianism.  Do you think poor kids give a crap about the socio-economic, political or cultural impact of e-books?  Of course, not.  Sure, maybe they struggle with wanting the latest gadget but not being able to afford it.  And those avid readers often wish they could afford to buy books instead of having to get them at the library, etc.

But the kind of issues Alexie raises are only thought about by those who are politically engaged and have the leisure time to contemplate the impact of consumer products on culture.  It is the same type of attitude that wants to shut down Wal-Mart because they would never consider shopping there. For certain people everything has a political angle and that has to be addressed.

And here is the thing.  I may disagree with some of the politics or cultural concerns and I may agree with some of them.  And, obviously, I think people have every right to voice their opinions and take action based on those opinions. Hate the Kindle?  Don’t buy one.  Want to try and convince others to do the same? Fine by me.

And if you work in the industry, or are impacted by it, I completely understand why you would voice concerns and take actions that you think are in the long term interest of your career and industry, etc.

But don’t expect everyone to think politics/culture/industry first.  Some of us just like reading books and any technology that makes that easier or improves the process is going to be popular.

And any strategy that doesn’t take this fact into consideration is doomed to failure in my opinion.

In his commentary on the Tournament of Books championship, John Warner echoed my sentiments toward publishing and eBooks perfectly in saying “Let a thousand flowers bloom—only free market, rather than commie-style.”

But he also offered a powerful example of the attractiveness of the Kindle:

The digital/print divide was reinforced for me this weekend after reading the New York Times Sunday Book Review online. The lead review was of Wells Tower’s new short story collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. It’s a rave and reinforced many of the great things I’ve been reading elsewhere, as well as my own impressions of Mr. Tower’s writing, having read his fiction in McSweeney’s and his nonfiction in Harper’s. It has become, officially, a “book I want.”

In the same edition there is a review of another new collection of stories, Caitlin Macy’s Spoiled. Another positive review, though the description doesn’t make the book sound as immediately appealing to me specifically as Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. Still, it became, officially, a “book I’d like to check out.”

This was Saturday, early, maybe eight o’clock. It was raining, unseasonably cool. I’d finished digesting the paper and was working on my oatmeal and I figured I’d see what’s what with these two new story collections. With the weather and the early hour, I wasn’t going to go anywhere, so I turned to the wife’s Kindle and found that only Macy’s book has a Kindle edition. I’d downloaded the first story in seconds, finished it in 15 minutes, and ordered the rest of the book right then and there. Meanwhile, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned remains in my unbought, “books I want” category, potentially forever since I’m constantly coming across books I want. Wells Tower and his publisher Farrar, Straus, and Giroux would’ve had a sale. Now, who knows? It may just get buried under the avalanche of new books.

That story illustrates one critical aspect of what makes the Kindle so useful and attractive (and dangerous quite frankly).  If you have a sudden desire to read a book, as John Madden might say: “Boom!” you can be reading it is seconds.

I found another example of smart marketing myself last month.  I found out that Ballantine Books was offering the first book in a series (His Majesty’s Dragon) free for Kindle users.  I quickly downloaded it and in fact started reading it rather quickly.

Now why was this so smart giving away books?  Well, as I am sure you have guessed, I went ahead and bought the next book in the series.  Risk one free book to hook readers into a series.  Gain loyal readers and customers.  As I said, smart.

And these scenarios can be played out anywhere.  You don’t have to be at home or near a computer.  You don’t have to have money with you or worry about carrying another heavy book. You just push a few buttons and start reading.

And this sort of convenience can’t be put back in the bottle.  Once you start to appreciate this capability you want to have more of it.  Those publishers who don’t find a way to offer it will miss out.

I will confess that I don’t know a great deal about the business end of publishing so I can’t comment on the concerns of publishers and authors.  But I know as a reader I love this instant on feature when it comes to books.  It doesn’t mean I will stop buying hard copy books by any means.  But in certain situations the publisher who finds a way to make their books available digitally, and at a competitive price, is going to have a distinct advantage when book buying choices are made.

Technology and business innovation is going to change the face of digital publishing and e-books.  I am sure the landscape will be much different in five years.  But I don’t think this kind of convenience and portability is going away.  Publishers will have to adjust; and soon.