This is _so_ juicy. I can't really leave it alone. The author makes a really great point: some people don't read very much, or at all. He notes that he reads "dozens". He even takes a look at the total size of the book market, which it had not occurred to me to consider: $26-40 billion a year, presumably the US market. He then makes major error #1:
"That works out to a maximum of $133/US citizen."
Nope. _Average_, taking the high end of the range. Also, he should know that is not a meaningful operation, given he's already demonstrated the extremely wide range of purchasing behavior. Median and mode are also useless, altho I had to think about that for a bit.
"It is a convenience for those who like to read. More specifically, for those who like to read a lot. Sadly, I’m not convinced that this describes a lot people. No, we’ve got generations of citizens who get their political knowledge from Jon Stewart’s comedy show"
Oooh, big error here. People who get political info from Jon Stewart are really well informed -- this has been documented. Also, they buy a _lot_ of books.
Comments thread wasn't rewarding enough for me to persist in, also, the navigation of it really kinda sucks.
His remarks about the installed base on the kindle potentially not wanting to switch are interesting, altho of course they fail to understand how thoroughly that part of the decision tree has been locked down by Amazon already -- Bezos doesn't really care if you read content you bought from Amazon on a kindle, an iPad or an iTouch or an iPhone.
