Amazon Kindle: Sharing Creates a Kind-ler Gentler Literate Nation

Kindle Book Lending : Authors are up in fingers about their content being traded and shared via E-books. A decade ago musicians were up in arms about a similar thing but lo and behold there are a million new musicians who are now selling their music just because they are down with the digital. Authors who have never sold an article in their life are now able to publish an entire novel on Barnes and Noble's self publisher and be available to the masses they could never before hope to reach.

Those who are complaining need to stop and consider the bigger picture. I asked some authors I know if they also felt libraries we're ripping them off. I did this because once upon a time an author I read digitally for free on a site she published on made a comment that anyone borrowing her book from the library was doing her a disservice and stealing money out of her pocket. And yet despite the number of libraries around and all the used book stores popping up all over the place it doesn't seem to stop masses of people from buying Harry Potter, Anne Rice, The Secret, anything by Dan Brown or the Twilight series. Perhaps the issue isn't really lending out books but writing books that everyone wants their own copy of?

I never loan out my copy of Where The Wild Things Are but I recycle Chick Lit like no one's business; giving it to friends who take it to their work place and share with the masses via a book exchange shelf. I've never loaned out my copy of Patti's Pearls either but I did buy multiple copies to give to my friends. I was thrilled to find them at one of those under five dollar an item closeout places in hard cover. If I had to pay full price for every book I've ever read I couldn't afford my reading habit never mind a house, a car or children.

Oh there is uproar about how much less e-books cost compared to the hardened copies; news flash that is a fallacy. The only books that cost less are the unknown authors with unproven track records. Anything that makes a best seller list, the Oprah list, or finds some modicum of buzz sells for maybe fifty cents less than you can buy the physical version for. Let's just say I haven't filled up 1/900^th of space on my kindle and I've had it since October. In fact there is only one book on it that I actually paid money for. The rest were offered to me for free through Amazon so what do they care if I share them when they are giving them away in the first place?

Technological advances have made the price of lots of things come down not just books. That is the way of the world. Fewer resources are being consumed, fewer people are laboring and there is a global shift in the job market toward technology. Supermarket checkers are virtually non-existent thanks to scanners, movie rentals have been quelled by on demand functions, commercials have been circumvented by DDR and books may not be printed on paper someday though it's probably not happening any time soon. Just like the music industry thought sharing files was going to be the death of music sales and it wasn't E-books are not going to be the death of "book" sales.

Don't you remember a time before you had a computer? Remember how you used to do all the things you now do online? The computer didn't stop you from doing those things it just changed the way you did them. It's called evolution... wow spin that a little and you could use it to argue man evolved from apes. And let me just say I'm not fond of Amazon or anyone else for that matter telling me how I can loan, share, or redistribute something I paid for. Much like I didn't put a dent in the financial status of authors with the Lori Borys' Reading-Is-Fun-and Mental book drives I held before I had a Kindle I won't be doing it now by passing out e-books on pin backed flash drives as party favors at the next Lapel Pin Lovers National Convention.