Thursday, January 7, 2010

Will the book survive?

And I'm not just talking about my book. Seattle is a good place to look at the dynamics of how the book business is changing (thanks, largely, to Amazon and Jeff Bezos), and the effects of technology, competition and the economy on book reading and retailing. In a recent interview with Newsweek, Bezos said he expected the ink-on-paper book to die out and hoped he would soon do all his reading on Kindle. I'm not against e-readers (in fact, Pugetopolis has been Kindled), but really? Do we want a bookless world? What are the differences between e-readers and the printed page? Some of my thoughts are laid out in this story on Crosscut.

2 comments:

  1. Hello Knute, this is Rachel from Sasquatch Books. I realize it's rather ironic to be responding to this particular post with this particular request, but we are trying to boost our online presence and were hoping you'd be able to post a link to our blog on your site.

    Thanks in advance!

    http://www.sasquatchbooksblog.com/

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  2. Knute- I got in the habit of reading on my NOOK before I got my cataracts fixed. Just ordered your Pugetopolis so I can continue so-doing in comfort. Works very well.
    Jerry Gropp Architect AIA

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