That’s not a perfect analogy for why “Spritz,” an app that’s going to be part of Samsung’s wearable technology, irks me, but it’s a good start. (And yes, I realize how awful the first half of that sentence is.)

You have to to see Spritz at work, but here’s a basic summary:

What Spritz does differently (and brilliantly) is manipulate the format of the words to more appropriately line them up with the eye’s natural motion of reading.

The “Optimal Recognition Point” (ORP) is slightly left of the center of each word, and is the precise point at which our brain deciphers each jumble of letters.

The unique aspect of Spritz is that it identifies the ORP of each word, makes that letter red and presents all of the ORPs at the same space on the screen.

In this way, our eyes don’t move at all as we see the words, and we can therefore process information instantaneously rather than spend time decoding each word.

Thanks to this app, which is conveniently part of your wearable technology, which, puke, people will now be able to read text faster—a whole lot faster. Average reading speed is just under 300 words a minute, but as you can see by clicking on the link above, it’s not very difficult to adjust to the 500 wpm speed. Not at all.

Which is great, right? Now we can read twice as fast! I WILL BE ABLE TO READ ALL OF TWITTER.

Seriously though, this is one of those things that terrifies and bugs me. Although there’s nothing inherently wrong with reading faster, there is something off-putting about the idea that reading is a thing that needs to be optimized. Sure, maybe this will allow Randy to finally read all the notes in preparation for your weekly “How to Excel at Excel” meeting, but when it comes to anything other application (maybe even that one), a focus on input speed alone can warp the overall reading process.

I don’t doubt that one can become “comfortable” with reading a much faster rate, and can improve at retention the more they use an app like this, but reading, really reading, is as much about thought, about looping back, about making connections—all of which are hindered by a system that is premised upon optimization. READ FASTER, BETTER, MORE EFFICIENTLY.

I can’t wait to have my grandkids laugh at me when I tell them about the days when we read for fun, in our spare time, because we just liked to do it. And we even held the books in our hands!

But, seeing that 140 characters isn’t really enough to explain what I meant—and why I think this particular article is both insulting and dangerous—I thought I’d use this space to expand on my original sentiments and try (maybe) to use this post about a hit HBO show to say something about reading culture in general.

First off, if you haven’t been watching True Detective, close this tab on your browser and download the first six episodes now.

For the rest of you, you know the basics: In 1995, two homicide detectives attempt to find a serial killer. Meanwhile, in 2012, thanks to a ritual killing with similarities to the earlier murders, those same two detectives are being questioned by two new cops about the events of 1995. (And 2002.)

Simple enough. More or less. But, as with any well-formed piece of art, there are references (primarily to weird fiction and by Robert Chambers), there are visual and verbal hints at how the whole story fits together, there are interesting techniques (like the birds in the sky) that complicate the point of view and the way the story is being told . . . In other words, this is—at least through the first six episodes—a carefully put together piece of art opening itself up to be “read.”

Every spring I teach a World Literature & Translation course, and at least a couple of sessions revolve around the unanswerable question of “why we read in the first place.” (Which is further complicated when you ask “why we read literature in translation at all.”) There are many reasons to read—for entertainment, to be educated, etc.—and one thing I like to talk about is the difference between the way the brain works when you read neo-realistic, “cinematic” writing (e.g., if you read about walking across sticky linoleum, opening the refrigerator and feeling the cold air on your face, your brain fires in a way very similar to what happens when you do that in real life) versus more “puzzling” prose in which it isn’t immediately clear what exactly is going on (e.g., The Sound and Fury and many other books that beg for you to pay attention to something other than the immediate descriptions). “Reading,” as I’m defining it, is paying attention to, and making sense of, the things an artist does that aren’t just painting you a straightforward picture.

Bob’s Burgers is a fantastic show. My kids endlessly repeat its funniest lines. I don’t think it’s as entertaining as Archer, but it’s rock solid. It’s not a show that I feel like I need to “read.” For the most part, it’s all right there. Quick witted with predictable characters that you think you “know” and episodes that follow the “normal” sit-com structure.

But if someone got really into “reading” Bob’s Burgers, that’s great! That’s what makes art fun to experience. That’s why—and granted, Bob’s Burgers isn’t equivalent to Kubrick—Room 237 is so damn good. It’s a documentary on how people read. How they see and interpret patterns. That’s the best thing you can hope for as an artist. That someone will think about your work in a way that takes it from the “cold air of the refrigerator” to something grander.

That is not what the aforementioned article is about. In fact, the opening two paragraphs pretty much insult anyone who has approached True Detective in this way. And, in my opinion, that series of insults is dangerous.

Possibly you’ve noticed, but a lot of people on the internet are obsessing over True Detective. A great many of them seem to be either unemployed or underemployed, because they’re hanging out all day every day on Reddit or the True Detective Facebook page, offering frankly incredible levels of detail in their analyses of the show.

If you’re capable of understanding that words mean things, you already know where I’m going to take this. According to this author, anyone who is “obsessing” over True Detective is “unemployed or underemployed” (aka A LOSER) mainly because they are posting their incredibly detailed thoughts on Reddit (NERD!).

Basic Message: People who “read” True Detective and share their thoughts, ideas—you know, pretty much the shit that makes you excited about experiencing someting interesting—those people are nerdy unemployed losers.

The amount of intricacy involved in their interpretive work would impress some biblical scholars, I think.

Interpretation: In case you didn’t get my first set of insults, here’s one more.

There are a fair amount of places where it feels like people are departing significantly from the text to get to their theories, so to speak.

Not only are you spending too much time—you unemployed nerd!—talking about this show, but you’re essentially wrong.

As someone who’s been watching the show more for the languid beauty of it and the greatness of Matthew McConaughey’s acting,

What the hell is this? So, you watch the show for two reasons—it’s languid beauty and Matthew McConaughey—and are subtly implying that those who don’t are doing something wasteful and wrong?

I confess that reading all this stuff over the last two days has been a revelation. First of all, I discovered that people really . . . see a whole lot of layers here that I don’t.

In other words, you don’t believe in their “readings” and therefore, they are all wrong. And should just watch the show for Matthew McConaughey (who, admittedly, totally kills it).

I think of this as a good document of the journey of two troubled detectives through a years-long movie case, but the internet audience’s reaction seems to be conditioned by years of puzzle shows like Lost to expect an ulterior motive behind every plot development.

I’m not sure I follow this sentence at all, but leaving aside the “years-long movie case,” I just want to open up a bit of a gap between the “puzzle shows like Lost” and noticing motifs and deciphering hints and making connections in a very well-done TV show that involves three timelines and some mysterious symbols and a bunch of murders.

And boy oh boy, are they experts at dreaming those ulterior motives up.

There’s no way to see this line as anything but one last insult.

To sum up: Sharing ideas and theories about a well-crafted TV show means you’re unemployed and that you’re watching for all the wrong reasons. It’s just entertainment, man! Just watch Matthew McConaughey and leave the thinking alone!

This is not good. This is a bad message. This is not what we need.

Personally, I’m very invested in a future filled with people who love to read books that aren’t simply “escapes.” Not that they shouldn’t read “escapist” literature—in which you feel the refrigerator’s coldness—but that they can also enjoy books/movies/TV shows/music that provides your mind with enough space and images to think and puzzle and read and enjoy. Without that sort of art—and more importantly, an appreciation of that sort of art—I just don’t see the point.

What’s funny/sad is that the website in which this article appeared receives more than 3 million visits a month. That is WAY more than Three Percent. And INFINITE times more than the number of Twitter followers I have. So why exactly did my tweet—claiming this article is “anti-reading/anti-thought” for the unstated reasons described above—generate a couple dozen angry tweets from the writers and editors at this website? I’m not sure. I have some ideas, but I’ll keep them to myself.

But that’s it. That’s why that article irritated me. I would say the same thing if it appeared in the New York Times. Although I’m sure the editors at the New York Times wouldn’t be quite so defensive. On Twitter.

Twitter.

Like this piece from Rob Salkowitz’s PW article

Instant Translation

Machine translation these days is pretty good. It’s not quite good enough for literature, technical publications, or legal contracts, but it’s getting there. The combination of algorithms, data analytics, and crowdsourcing are teaching machines the subtleties of idiom and tone in a variety of languages. Very soon, instant text translation, combined with text recognition, will be available via augmented-reality applications for mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets, and wearables like Glass. No more waiting for translations of foreign editions to become available; no more foreign rights. Think that will disrupt the publishing and localization industries much?

Kaija’s comment on hearing me read this aloud: “Not quite good enough for literature, technical publications, or legal contracts—THAT’S EVERYTHING!”

Jan’s comment after finishing this: “That’s just fucking stupid.”

Seriously. The day we’re all reading instant translations of Mircea Cartarescu on our Google Glasses is the day I just simply quit.

Amazon has unveiled a new US initiative to bundle print and e-books, called Kindle MatchBook.

The online retailer is to offer customers the opportunity to buy Kindle editions of print books bought from Amazon.com for prices said to range typically from $2.99 down to completely free.

The offer will set to be available not only on newly published titles, but also titles bought as far back as 1995, where the books are signed up to the scheme.
Russ Grandinetti, vice-president of Kindle content, said: “If you logged onto your CompuServe account during the Clinton administration and bought a book like Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus from Amazon, Kindle MatchBook now makes it possible for that purchase—18 years later—to be added to your Kindle library at a very low cost. In addition to being a great new benefit for customers, this is an easy choice for publishers and authors who will now be able to earn more from each book they publish.”

First of all, even if you did buy it when Clinton was in office do not buy the Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus ebook no matter how cheaply Amazon makes it via this program. Please. Save yourself.

Now, there are a number of angles to this announcement, but let’s start with some obvious, pro-reader ones: FINALLY WE HAVE BUNDLING. This is something most people with an e-reader and a love of physical books have wanted for a while—and something that music labels have been offering. In terms of music, if makes total sense (to me) that if you buy the vinyl of an album, you get a code so that you can download the mp3 version as well, allowing you to listen to the music while sitting on your couch, or while running at the gym. Basically—and this is a very important point—the music manufacture is selling you the content not the container.

As things currently stand in the book world, if you bought a copy of Javier Marias’s The Infatuations because you love Marias and are willing to shell out $20 for the hardcover version, and then, say, you wanted to take this with you to read Iceland, but, due to the fact that you’re schlepping other stuff, you don’t necessarily have the room for more than your Kindle, you’d have to pay an additional $12+ to get the eversion. Essentially, publishers are treating these two different “containers” (the physical book, the ebook) as separate items to be purchased separately.

But that’s madness. Putting aside the fact that basically no one reads these days anyway, it’s crazy to put your customers in a position where they have to choose between buying either a print version or an e-version of a book when the fixed costs to you (the publisher) are accounted for in the purchase of either one of these. Instead, offer three options: the print book for $20, the ebook for $15, or both for $23. I’d probably choose $23, or maybe $15, but I would NEVER choose to pay $35 to get both. And when a customer has so many other entertainment options, it seems like the smartest thing to do is to make things simple and keep them happy.

Dustin at Melville House pretty much disagrees with me:

We’ve discussed this before, and indeed, our own Dennis Johnson is less averse to the idea of bundling ebooks than I find myself. but it bears repeating: the problem with ebook bundling is that consumers have no real sense of what a book should cost. Readers don’t know what, specifically, they are paying for when they buy a book. If you tell them, as Amazon has repeatedly done, that ebooks are worth a dollar or less, of course they’ll believe that. After all, there is no paper to pay for.

Unlike the ever-astute readers of MobyLives, the general book buyer might not imagine, for instance, that the price of materials—the weighty stuff of a book, paper etc.—for an average hardcover book from a major publisher will rarely make up more than 15% of the eventual price of the book. Books cost what they do because the services to produce them are expensive, not the paper. Editors, designers, even marketers like myself, all cost money. And while people can and certainly have argued that publishing is broken and all of those professionals that make a book attractive or worth reading or help you find it in stores are essentially obsolete, it is impossible to argue that the value they add to a book is somehow moot if that book is digital. Ebooks from publishers benefit from the hand of an editor as much as their print editions, and that benefit is reflected in the price.

The problem I have with his logic is that he’s not taking into account the fact that this discounted ebook version is only available to customers who also buy the print version. If Amazon was reducing all ebooks to $2.99 or free, then he’d have a point. As things stand, there are like 10 gazillion $.99 books available on Amazon—the vast majority only slightly better than Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus—and that’s not even what we’re talking about. Instead we’re talking about Amazon providing a benefit that a lot of high-volume readers are going to value greatly.

Let’s look at this from a publisher point of view for a second though: We (meaning Open Letter) just looked at the royalty rates for signing our books up for this program. If you decide to enroll a title into MatchBook and sell it for $2.99 or less (with the purchase of the original), you the publisher receive either 70% or 35% of each sale depending on which royalty program the ebook is already enlisted in. That’s not bad at all . . . So, if we sell a copy of Inga Ābele’s High Tide, which retails for $15.95, and the Amazon customer decides to get the ebook for $2.99, we receive an additional $2, $.75 of which goes to the author/translator, and, more importantly, one more copy of the ebook is out there, and one reader is happy that they can read the Kindle version on the subway and the print version at home. (Or, because people are devious like this, that person could give away the print version as a gift, meaning that we lose a potential—emphasis on potential—sale and gain a second reader.)

There’s always an anti-Amazon tack to take on things like this, but personally, as a reader and a small press publisher, I’m totally on board. The one area in which I think this will have a negative impact is on independent bookstores and their agreement with Kobo.

Not too long ago, as a way of getting into the ebook and ereader market, the American Booksellers Association signed a deal with Kobo that let indie stores sell Kobo devices and receive a percentage of sales made through the devices they sold. I’ve heard good things about the devices and the small, but semi-significant, stream of money coming in from this. (I’ve also heard booksellers tell me that this has fuck all to do with their core business, and that indies should focus on their strengths instead of trying to get a piece of Amazon’s ebook pie.)

Anyway, unless Kobo works out something soon—be it or a special code or whatever—it’s going to be that much more difficult for your average reader to go with a device/system that doesn’t allow bundling, compared to a very ubiquitous one that does. Hopefully they will figure this out ASAP though, since it only makes sense that you could buy the book in person, pay a couple extra bucks at the register, and download it to your device immediately.

One last thought about “content” versus “containers”: Amazon is extremely good at viewing things from this angle and finding ways to integrate the reading experience in all of its forms. Starting this October, for some titles (I assume), you’ll be able to buy the print book, then add on the ebook for $2.99, and add on the Audible audiobook for an additional $2.99. Then you can listen while you exercise, have it sync with your Kindle version for the subway ride home, then pick up the physical book when you want that (superior, in my opinion) experience. All the same book, the same content, for one reasonable price, in contrast to having to buy three full priced versions (totaling what, $45?) for the opportunity to better integrate reading into parts of your daily life.

¹ When I first saw this “MatchBook” terms showing up in my email, I thought that it was some new discovery tool, and if not that, some sort of Amazon dating service: “Seeing that you gave Death in Spring five stars on GoodReads, you might like to meet Carrie, who gave Satantango five stars. LOVE AT FIRST BOOK.”

A social media tool powered by Odyl, Riffle takes its name from the word for thumbing through a book.¹ And that’s exactly the sense of discovery that Odyl founder and CEO Neil Baptista would like to re-create online. He wants to go beyond the current Internet phase where anybody can write a review. “We’re going to focus on bringing the audience to the table and curating the information. There’s a ton of online expertise, and we want people to push their content through Riffle,” says Baptista, who plans to work with book bloggers, booksellers, authors, and others to create a “distilled single feed” for books. [. . .]

Initially, Riffle is planning to invite avid readers, who Baptista believe are more likely to look to experts for book recommendations than casual readers. The platform also relies on checklists that convert well in Facebook, such as the 50 books to read before you die or the books you hope your soulmate has read. “Our whole perspective is that content will get people attracted to this,” says Baptista, who is following the Pinterest and Instagram models. “We want to invite people in and be part of its development.” One piece of that could include selling through online retailers.

I do have to admit that the phrase “Pinterest for Books” makes me vomit in my mouth, but I also have a borderline-compulsive obsession with online book discovery and how these things function, so, when I was contacted by the Riffle staff to sign up and Pinterest Riffle people some works of World Literature, I did so immediately.

The first thing that I had to do was set up my profile, which is refreshingly sparse. Picture, short bio, link to Three Percent. You can see it by

And while you’re there, you can explore the next level of Riffling. First off, you can choose to follow my Twitter feed (which is rather boring, since all I do on there is tweet my GoodReads stuff and offensive/funny comments about sporting events), or, if you’re a fellow Riffler, you can choose to follow me there. Which is what I really want you to do. That and click all over my lists.

The “lists” are the core of the Riffling Experience™. These are groupings of books that Rifflers put together to share with other people looking for a Riffling Good Read. So far I’ve made two: and

And after making them, I shared them on Facebook, which is as simple to do as you’d expect in 2012, and as a result, at this exact moment, they’ve received 21 views (not bad?) and I have an “influence” score of 8!

This “influence” thing is interesting to me. First off, it’s basically just a “like” aggregation score. Eight people have “liked” my lists, WHICH IS UTTER BULLSHIT, since I think ALL 21 people who looked at my lists should’ve liked them.

But seriously, the thing this is kind of tapping into—although indirectly and in ways unaware—is our obsession with games and scoring. Follow me for a second: I would guess that around 20% of the posts I see on FB are status updates made solely to get “likes.” Shit, I do this myself sometimes. (“Look at me! LIKEMELIKEMELIKEME!”) Like a video game, “likes” and retweets function as the “score” signifying how well you’re doing at life. Or at least social networking.

When I see someone post something like an engagement or the birth of a new baby, and they only have a couple dozen “likes,” a small part of me dies on the inside. Which is sick and fucked because clearly FB is not a gauge of your importance or relevance or anything, but who doesn’t like seeing those little red circles in the upper right corner acting like little food pellets keeping us addicted to the whole FB game?

So yeah, I want a HUGE Influence score. I want to be The Most Influential of the “World Literature” Rifflers. (As long as it doesn’t require me to actually Riffle more than once a blue moon, cause I’ve got enough shit on my plate.)

What might be more interesting—theoretically—is if the “influence” wasn’t an actual number, but a percentage of people who “liked” your list. So if 8 of 21 people liked my lists, I would have a 38% influence score. WHICH BLOWS. But that would be a much more interesting way to judge the validity and usefulness of these lists. Under the current system, I could post 10,000 meaningless lists over the next 3 hours, and if one person was “influenced” by each one, I would be kicking some numerical ass. But if 500,000 people saw these, and the vast majority realized that I was just dicking around, that “influence” score would be 5%—a much more accurate way of determining the worthfulness of my lists. Just saying.

One last rant: The “questions” section of Riffle is AWFUL. This is one of the things that probably sounds good in a board meeting (“It’ll be like those questions on OKCupid! People love answering questions about themselves!”), but in practice is really kind of embarrassing. Here’s a sampling of questions you can answer to help build your Riffle profile (Riffle-file?):

What books remind you of the place(s) you grew up?

Name some books by your favorite author! (Exclamation point unnecessary, and please state in the form of a question, Riffle.)

What books have changed the course of your life?

Which books would you hope your soulmate has read? (A: Freedom. And the Bible. Natch.)

If you could only save a few books from a fire, which would they be?

I’m sure some people like these—I’m just a jaded cynical man. But really, I will never answer any of these. Ever. Never ever.

Anyway, at the moment you have to “request an invite,” unless you’re a Facebook friend of mine. (I think.) In which case, if you email me, I can send you an invite that (maybe) bypasses the request bit. So, go to it. RIFFLE AWAY.

¹ OK, in my non-scientific polling, I think I’ve just identified a new Midwesternism. In Michigan, we always said that we were “rifling through a book” as you would rifle through a drawer to find matching socks. Even now, knowing that “riffle” is the appropriate term, I’m having a hard time saying, “hand me that 1Q84 I want to riffle through it” without feeling like a molester.

Everything you can read in a month for just €9.99 sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it? That is what Booquo, the new digital venture of Circulo de Lectores — the book club owned by publishing giants Planeta and Bertelsmann — is offering, making them among the few brave enough to tread the forbidden path of access vs. ownership that frightens so many print publishers in this digital age. [. . .]

Booquo has two business models — conventional and subscription. The first allows you to rent movies (from a selection of 1,000) and buy e-books (some 10,000 titles are on offer) that is open to anybody who visits the site. This shop, which functions like any other e-retailer, has a partnership with Filmin for the movie rentals and uses the e-distributor Libranda (of which Planeta and Bertelsmann are main shareholders) for downloadable e-books, which are sold at the same fixed price that anybody will find at Amazon Spain or Casa del Libro. The second is the “club,” which offers a one month trial subscription of € 0,99 in an opt-out system that will charge your credit card €9,99 per month thereafter till the account is cancelled.

Reed is already looking to bigger changes in 2013. In a blog post yesterday Rosato discussed a move to B2C, enabling publishers to connect directly with consumers. The show would move to Thursday to Saturday with the general public invited to attend author events and go on the show floor on the final day. “Nothing is baked,” he wrote, “and we have a ton of due diligence to conduct to insure that a BEA that includes consumers, is an event that serves the industry.”

Better late than never. And just wait for the Simon & Schuster rant about how “readers don’t belong at our day of books!” I’m sure their reaction will be priceless and as confused as all get out.

The goal is to transform book reading into a social activity, bringing together readers via their e-readers, and to grab a share of the booming E-book market. Other companies have their eye on social reading as well, such as the platform LovelyBooks. But Readmill, set to go live soon, wants to take the idea even further.

Both avid readers, Berggren and Kjelkerud have an ambivalent relationship with books. Kjelkerud calls them “somehow cold and unsocial.” Reading is solitary, and anyone who wants to discuss a passage must first shut their book, he explains. Berggren says that even digital books and the internet-connected reading devices haven’t changed things much. “There are many E-book services, but none of them are really social,” he explains. What was missing were good ideas to network books and readers with each other.

Readmill, an intelligent bookmark for e-books, is their answer. The program looks over the reader’s shoulder, keeping a protocol of their progress and showing sections that have been highlighted and commented upon by other readers. This way Readmill members create a semi-public reference list for their books, giving them the possibility of alerting friends to interesting passages for discussion.

Music fans will recognize this principle from Last.fm, a music website that analyzes listening patterns to develop new artist and concert suggestions, in addition to bringing users with similar tastes together. Like Last.fm, Readmill’s software operates on three levels: as a background process for reading applications, as a web service that processes reading habits, and as a reading app for the iPad, where members can upload e-books that aren’t copyright protected.

Also similar to Last.fm, Readmill gets interesting when as many other e-book reading programs and devices as possible feed the Readmill central server with data. By year’s end, Berggren told SPIEGEL ONLINE, the company hopes to be supporting enough reading programs so that it could, theoretically at least, be combined with 80 percent of all e-books.

As I’ve said before, and will likely say again, creating book discovery tools for this Age of Screens is a huge growth market and great opportunity for people looking to get into an exciting new part of the book industry.

In terms of Readmill, this sounds a lot like an automated GoodReads. Which has it’s appeal. Right now, you have to go into GoodReads, report on what you’re reading or about to read, and find friends, etc., etc. I’m a constant user of GoodReads (feel free to “friend” me! My username is simply chadwpost), but I do tend to spend a lot more time on Last.fm, since everything I listen to is automatically “scrobbled” there, thus generating a bunch of recommendations of other bands to check out, etc.

I still think this sort of game is more suited to music than books, since even though I read an absurd amount of stuff (over 80 books a year), I listen to more than 1,000 songs a month, providing way more data about what sorts of things I like, how often I go back to relisten to them, what my trends are over time, so on and forth. With books, I may think about or reread a section of a particular book every couple months, but this info doesn’t show up in GoodReads . . . Any book I give “4-stars” to is of equal weight as another 4-star book. But at Last.fm, I can “love” 100 songs, but of those 100, it knows that I listened to one of them 50 times over the past year, and another only once. It’s all about granularity . . .

The has an interesting piece about this that highlights the contradictions surrounding this device. On the one hand:

The retailer is on the verge of introducing its own tablet, analysts predict, a souped-up color version of its Kindle e-reader that will undercut the iPad in price and aim to steal away a couple of million in unit sales by Christmas.

And on the other:

“The No. 1 thing consumers do on tablets is e-mail,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester analyst. “The No. 2 thing is look up stuff on the Web. Then playing games and watching video. Amazon will offer all the tablet that many consumers need.” She estimated initial sales of as many as five million devices.

Based on the success of the iPad—which was supposed to “magically” save the publishing industry¹—it’s more important that ereaders allow for simultaneous emailing, tweeting, and video watching for those times when, you know, you’re not doing anything but reading . . .

¹ In a way it did. Not necessarily as a device or a way of making ebooks as popular as streaming movies or music, but in the way that Apple’s entrance into the market led to the adoption of the agency model and higher prices for most ebooks.

This is a rather simple model, one that’s very much like Spotify and Netflix, and only really applicable to books now that ereaders are fairly affordable and a significant number of books have been digitized.

It’s also an idea that

Online retailer Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN: News ) is close to launching a digital book library and is in talks with book publishers, according to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. The library will enable customers to access a digitized content by paying an annual subscription fee, similar to the service provided by Netflix, Inc. (NFLX). [. . .]

The launch of the digital library by Amazon could also further harm the print media and could lower the cost of print books and the demand for them.

Couple quick points:

1) I am a shitty capitalist. Not that I’m the only person to have ever thought about this, but it seems like one of those things that a smarter, more money hungry sort of person would’ve been proposing to a venture capitalist/Amazon a million months ago.

2) I actually think these services are good for print media (and the music industry). The issue of why you read/listen to what you read/listen to, and how you stay within your prescribed comfort zone, is a topic much to large for this ephemeral blog post, but if there’s ever a situation where readers/listeners are willing to “take a chance” on something out of the ordinary, it’s this sort of unlimited subscription model. Before Rhapsody (which I subscribed to for a decade before shunning them in favor of the younger, sexier Spotify), I bought maybe 6 CDs a year, listened to music occasionally, and would pirate things I maybe thought sounded OK, but wasn’t necessarily sold on. Rhapsody changed everything. This past weekend, I listened to tracks from at least 30 artists I had never before heard of, discovering a few I liked, and a number that were just meh. From a user’s perspective, this sort of noodling is essentially free, since you pay $10/month to check out any and everything you want. For presses like Open Letter, a service like this could be golden, since someone interested vaguely in international literature, but unwilling to spend $15 or even $9 on a book by an author with a strange name, would be able to start reading that book for a price that, within their mind at least, is basically $0. It’s like how you start watching strange shows on cable just because they’re there . . . There’s no risk in starting Museum of Eterna’s Novel and finding out if you think it’s the “First Good Novel.”

3) This service would convince me to buy an ereader. Not to replace my current book collecting obsession (on recent trip to New York I gave away 4 Open Letter books to reviewers and booksellers and bought 6 new titles), but to supplement it. There are things I don’t want to own, and books I’d like to just check out. It would be like a massive library right in your hand!