I've been shopping for books on Amazon quite a bit recently. I've noticed in the searches lately that a majority of links are defaulting to audio or Kindle editions of books. By "a lot", I mean most. At first I brushed this off as a marketing decision: Kindle books are selling at a higher rate, or they are trying to push for increasing use of Kindle, blah blah blah.
But then it occurred to me, after thinking about some of the censorship issues, that this is going to create quite a predicament given sufficient time. Digitizing all of our books and giving ownership of that property to a monopolistic company to completely control distribution and access to.
It got me thinking, especially considering the "dot com" bubble in the 90s, and how several key companies (the monsters of today) escaped that crash, and why these companies are so heavily subsidized by to the government - to the extent that there isn't much practical separation between federal and private interest. Amazon utilizes the US postal service's infrastructure and manpower for Gods sake.
It might be too paranoid, but just look at the trajectory with respect to books. Traditional publishing is dying overall, perhaps not in certain niches. It just seems apparent we've got a situation as it concerns books and Amazon is apparently pushing heavily for you to start accepting digital books, and for your access to them to be subscription as a service at some point.
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jonnyquest ago
Buy the physical copy; ditch your kindle until there's a better way (digital copies should come free w/ physical ones, but that's another story).
Don't forget -- Just about anyone who has ever been anyone worth remembering has/had their own private library -- there's probably a good reason for this.
chirogonemd ago
Totally agree with this. We need to start building our libraries of physical books. There may be a day in the future - perhaps not so far - where you can't get physical books anymore. And I've no confidence whatsoever in Amazon's ability to objectively "curate" literary history. We'll no doubt see the elimination of a ton of valuable writing from our past, and in the present.