I like the digital revolution
Two huge announcements from Amazon.com today. First, it has created a program that it is calling Amazon Pages, through which it will now sell books by the page. While it probably won’t affect the fiction market, it should have a profound effect on the non-fiction and essay collection market. For instance, if you only need one essay in an entire anthology, you’ll now be able to buy just that essay. Depending on how the price the pages, we’re talking about a significant amount of savings.
But that’s only the first announcement. The second is called Amazon Upgrade. With this program, you’ll now be able to purchase an online edition of the bound book they deliver to your door. Again, this might not have a huge effect on the fiction market, but in non-fiction, the process of research will be greatly accelerated. Instead of having to comb through the index or through the pages of the book to find all the instances where, for example, Wittgenstein uses the phrase “language games,” you’ll now be able to access the online edition and run a quick computer-enabled search. Another use would be to make it easier to quote a book in writing; instead of having to type the quote into your Word document, you’ll now be able to copy and paste it from your browser. From a students perspective, both of these announcements are unbelievable. I am extremely excited.
This is comparable to Google’s anouncement that it would upload the entire contents of different academic libraries around the world. But where Google seemed to piss of content creators, Amazon’s program seems to work with them: the content creators get paid for the work that is accessed. As a person who hopes to one day make money by creating content, I think this is a step in the right direction.