What’s the one area of technology that I’m still relatively keen on? That’s right: e-books, but that’s because I like the idea of having several books on my person at all times in a device that fits inside my trousers. (The latest: The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. Not an e-book, by the way, since I’m not made of money.) Devin, on the other hand, who also reads his share of books, is not as big a fan of the tech. We’re like The Odd Couple! Anyway, I bring this up because it looks like Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol, is the first book on record that is selling better on the Amazon Kindle than its hardcover counterpart. (Blah, blah, the death of books…)
So what’s going on here? Well, yes, the Kindle version has been outselling the hardcover version on Amazon, but as Fast Company wrote, Amazon isn’t the only book store out there. And since this is a Dan Brown book we’re talking about, you know it’s going to sell like crazy for some reason. (Ron, from Ron and Fez, recently described The Da Vinci Code as a chick flick of a book, but one that men can read without being embarrassed. I never read the book nor saw the movie, so I can’t speak to that.) I wouldn’t be surprised to see it on sale at the corner bodega once it hits paperback.
Never mind that the number of people who can read is greater than the number of people who can read and who can afford a Kindle.
The future, it will be written in an e-book.