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eBooKs: Neither e, Nor BooKs
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* They were in languages that non-priests could read. You no
longer had to take the Church’s word for it when its priests ex-
plained what God really meant.
* They birthed a printing-press ecosystem in which lots of
books flourished. New kinds of fiction, poetry, politics, scholar-
ship, and so on were all enabled by the printing presses whose
initial popularity was spurred by Luther’s ideas about religion.
Note that all of these virtues are orthogonal to the virtues of a
monkish Bible. That is, none of the things that made the Guten-
berg press a success were the things that made monk-Bibles a
success.
By the same token, the reasons to love ebooks have precious
little to do with the reasons to love paper books.
[CHART: WHY EBOOKS KICK ASS]
* They are easy to share.
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
went from a midlist title to a bestseller by being passed from hand
to hand by women in reading circles. Slashdorks and other neti-
zens have social lives as rich as reading-circlites, but they don’t
ever get to see each other face to face; the only kind of book they
can pass from hand to hand is an ebook. What’s more, the single
factor most correlated with a purchase is a recommendation from
a friend — getting a book recommended by a pal is more likely to
sell you on it than having read and enjoyed the preceding volume
in a series!
* They are easy to slice and dice. This is where the Mac evan-
gelist in me comes out — minority platforms matter. It’s a truism
of the Napsterverse that most of the files downloaded are bog-
standard top-40 tracks, like 90 percent or so, and I believe it.
We all want to hear popular music. That’s why it’s popular. But
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