Burning the Page

July 15, 2013
Merkoski, one of the leading members of the team that developed and launched Amazon's Kindle and the e-book revolution, shares his views on "the future of reading, communication, and human culture." The author compares the development of e-readers to Gutenberg's invention of the printing press 500 years ago. Just as the Gutenberg Bible laid the basis for mass distribution of books and the spread of literacy, Merkoski dreams of the creation of pocket devices that can contain the contents of entire public libraries. "Reading has not only been transformed," he writes, "but also rebooted." The author attributes Amazon's initial success as a market leader to its ability to create "an easy, seamless customer experience," as well as its marketing expertise and its pre-existing customer base. Crediting iPads with greater sensual appeal and Kindle with quicker access, in his opinion, the two greatest inventions if the 21st century so far have been Apple's iPhone and Amazon's Kindle. What's lacking is the ability for complex indexing using links. It is Kindle's connection to the cloud that will allow it to become mainstream, writes Merkoski, who foresees a tipping point looming when e-book readers will overtake the printed book and social networking will be directly incorporated into the reading experience. This will allow ongoing collaborative revisions by readers and the original author. Looking further to the future, Merkoski imagines that "linear line-by-line reading" may become "a quaint pastime like butter churning or horseback riding." It could be replaced by holographic projections and other visuals. Further into the future, the author imagines the possibility of mind-to-mind direct communication, "some sort of high-speed plug that goes into an author's head, some way of taking an author's imagination and converting it directly into a digital format." Although he is no longer connected with Amazon, Merkoski does not discuss the current disputes among publishers, Amazon and Apple. A provocative book that will appeal mostly to futurologists, techies and devoted readers, many of whom will not share Merkoski's love of technology but will find the book interesting nonetheless.

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August 1, 2013
In this collection of 22 essays, Merkoski, former senior Kindle program manager at Amazon, shares his version of the history of e-books and his thoughts on the future of reading. Each section concludes with a Bookmark, a short piece that takes a look at a particular aspect of the print world (such as covers, indexing, bookstores, and browsing) and how it has evolved in the world of e-books. These pieces each feature a distinct URL directing the user to Facebook or Twitter to continue the conversation, offering bonus essays and more. More of a personal narrative than a history or a manifesto, this offering won't supply readers with salacious details about the inner workings and trade secrets of Amazon. Librarians will enjoy his waxing poetic about how lovely books are and how valuable reading is to our culture, but they will likely be disappointed in the fact that the brief essay Libraries spends more time talking about print books than it does e-books. That aside, there's no question that e-books are certainly a hot topic and readers will be interested to know what an industry insider has to say about them.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)