Thank you Oprah for priming the pump of digital book sales. She plugged the Amazon Kindle in October and sales have taken off. By some accounts, Amazon has sold a million Kindles. Oddly, they won’t announce how many. I wonder if their reticence has something to do with the number of digital books sold. Hmmm. For instance, if 1 million Kindles have been sold, but only 1.1 million digital books, at $11.00 a pop, that would suggest people don’t like the medium. They are not coming back in other words.
Anyway, the Kindle and competitors, which now include the iPhone, will change the book market, no doubt. Even a geeze like me expects to be a user soon. But book publishers must look out for piracy or they’ll end up like their music counterparts — not making money on their art, but on book signings (digital, of course). The pirates are out there. And even Oprah won’t be able to stop them. Peace! And happy holidays!