Well, here’s a first – Air in the Paragraph #13 is now available on the Kindle. For only $1.99, you get the book in its entirety, delivered wirelessly to your Kindle. And you get it probably about a month before you could get the physical print edition.
A couple of things – first, I know some of you will be all “DUDE WE HATE THE KINDLE BECAUSE WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BECAUSE OUR HIPSTER DOOFUS OVERLORDS MAKE US BE ALL CONTRARIAN ABOUT IT”. And that’s fine – if you don’t want to shell out to buy a Kindle, don’t. I’ve had one since Christmas, and even though I am a person with a lot of dead trees around the house, I also enjoy reading on the e-ink screen, and find that the only real problem with the Kindle is it makes it far too easy and convenient to buy books. It’s like one of those morphine pumps that dump a shot of opiates in your IV tube at the press of a button, and that’s a bit dangerous to me. If you’re not into buying one, I’m not going to twist your arm or anything.
(You could, if you really want, just download the Kindle software for your PC, iPhone, or Blackberry, then spend the two bucks on the book and read it a month before it comes out on paper. And that’s cool too, although if you’re not reading an e-ink screen, you’re sort of missing the point.)
And yes, there is some huge price and format war bullshit going down with major publishers and the Kindle. Some are arguing about hiking up their prices, and some are only putting out their e-book editions months after the hardcover publish date, so they don’t undercut sales or whatever. But guess what? I’m not a big publisher. I am probably shooting myself in the foot, or at least taking a big gamble by releasing the Kindle version first. I make more money off of the $9.95 print edition, but I also want as many people to read this as possible. And I realize some of you would rather have the paper edition, and get the cool cover art and the ability to put this on the shelf with your other dead tree books and enjoy it for years to come. And that’s fine, too. The choice is yours, so feel free to check out either.
The URL for the Kindle edition: http://www.amazon.com/Air-Paragraph-Line-13-ebook/dp/B0038M2FSM/ If you do check it out, please let me know what you think – I’m curious to hear from others if this is a service I should offer on future books, too.
