There will, I trust, be more like this in the coming months. About time too:
The media's response to this device will, I am sure, be negative. We will hear a lot, over the next few weeks, about the soullessness of reading on screen compared to turning pages. If I promised you a pound for every time you are told by a columnist during the month of October that "you can't read a Kindle in the bath", I would be skint by Christmas.
In the newspapers, on TV arts shows (are there still any TV arts shows?), on Radio 4, around us at social occasions, we will see and hear mournful disquisitions on the beauty of the old-fashioned papery book and what a tragedy it would be if people stopped buying them.
But you know what? Nobody buys books anyway. Nobody. If you have a friend who has written a book, ask how many copies it sold. The answer will probably be 12. Or none.
Victoria Coren goes realist in The Observer.
No comments:
Post a Comment