So if we read Norm correctly, Apple is making its own Kindle type device for reading, among other things, newspapers, something Kindle readers have been doing for years. As an Apple product, it will cost even more than the overpriced Kindle, but everyone on the streetcar – everyone who counts – everyone who has a modicum of chic – will recognize the Apple reader as being hipper than the downmarket Amazon device. For what that’s worth.
Neither device will satisfy the tactile and/or olfactory reader. Tactile and olfactory readers jump into Kindle conversations with “But don’t you miss the feeling of a book in your hands?” We know we’re supposed to feel like a clodpole, but we actually don’t miss that feeling. We’re all about content. We do miss good illustrations. That’s a problem with the Kindle, and it will probably plague the Apple device. But that’s minor.
What we should be worrying about is how much authors get as their share of that low electronic edition price.
Olfactory readers? Those are the readers who come into the ML and start rhapsodizing about the smell of books and how much they love it. Sometimes we explain that they are getting a whiff of red rot, mould, and decaying leather. Sometimes we just wait for them to get dewy eyed over the card catalogue. (Soon not to be a problem)
-Nemo Wolfe
