George Parker: The End of Publishing, Book Selling, and Reading, As We Know It!

The last few weeks have been busy ones in the eBook space. Amazon launched its man-hole cover sized Kindle DX to generally favorable reviews. There’s talk about them launching a color version in the near future and one analyst is forecasting sales of 900,000 units in 2009, rising to 1.4 million in 2010. When you consider these babies start at $350 and go up from there, even if you believe Amazon’s claim that it costs them $150 to manufacture each unit – Which is absolute bullshit – It’s no wonder Bezos has an idiotic grin perpetually plastered on his face. Even GodJobs can’t wring those kinds of margins out of the GodPhone sweatshops. Here’s another thing to make Bezos fucking delirious. Kindle books are about 10 to 40 percent cheaper than hard cover counterparts. But paperbacks are often the same price on the Kindle as on the regular site, which gives higher margins for Amazon and the publisher. And if you really want something horrible to look forward to, Amazon has just taken out two patents for “On-demand generated eBook content with advertising.” Meaning that your latest John Grisham yawn will have as many ads in it as the Manhattan Yellow Pages. And anything sexy will have more ads for hookers than CraigsList. Isn’t technology great?

Now there’s word that Google may not be in the clear after its recent settlement with book publishers over the digital publishing rights to certain books, The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed Thursday that is has opened a formal investigation into the settlement. Wow, Google CEO, Eric Schmidt must be doing a Ballmer and smashing all the chairs in the fucking GooglePlex… Remember, he went out and campaigned for Obama, and this is the fucking thanks he gets? And let’s not forget the FTC is making ominous noises about Schmidt being on the board of Apple, and how this could be a conflict of interest… C’mon guys, give the man a break. Just remember the Google mantra… “Do no harm while making fucking billions.”

Regular readers should remember that just a couple of weeks ago, right here on psfk, you were reading about “The Espresso Book Machine,” which is essentially an ATM for books that automatically prints, binds, and trims, on demand at point of sale, perfect-bound, library-quality paperback books. A 300-page book can be produced in four minutes for a cost of a penny per page. But, the plan is to locate this Gutenberg nightmare in book stores, which is a bit redundant, as you may as well burn down the book store and locate the machine in your nearest pub. Anyway, most Neanderthal publishers, and the outlets they sell through will be history in a few years. I published my last book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders directly through Amazon, ‘cos that’s where most of my sales come from, and I make more fucking money, by cutting out the middle man. As I said earlier, isn’t technology great?

George Parker is the perpetrator of adscam.typepad.com, without doubt, one of the most foul and annoying, piss & vinegar ad blogs on the planet. His new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, has just been published by Amazon and is currently setting the ether ablaze. He will continue to relentlessly promote the crap out of it until you are forced to stab yourself in the eyes with knitting needles.