There's no half glass full - fewer people are reading fiction.

I've seen a quote attributed to Steven Jobs several times over the last week, concerning how few Americans read books. I traced it back to an interview with the NY Times in January of this year. Yes, he did say that “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.". As an aspiring writer, I find that depressing as all hell. Please, let him have his facts wrong. Searching further, I can't find what his source for that number was, but I did find a study published in 2004 with data from 2002 by the National Endowments for the Arts. Maybe Mr. Jobs has slightly more recent numbers, because it turns out that 56% had read a book, but that's only if you include non-fiction. If you're only looking at novels, short stories, plays, or poetry, just 46& had read a book. And that's not a steady figure. It's almost 10% than ten years earlier. The closest thing to any good news for a fiction writer in the NEA study is that the actual number of readers has stayed approximately the same because of population growth.

Oh, and if the hard facts that there are fewer people reading literature isn't a dark enough cloud, there's this little tidbit from the study - more people are writing. Goody. More competition.

Another electronic reader

Amazon debuted Kindle, their newest entry into the electronic book reader market on Monday, at that means the reviews of people who actually paid for the thing are starting to be posted. (There are lots of reviews on the device's page at Amazon, but the positives mostly come from hand picked testers and the negatives from people who don't have one. So, pretty much useless, in my opinion.)

One of the first real customer reviews to show up on a Google blog search came from XML Aficionado. I appreciate that that blogger isn't taking part in the Amazon kick-back program, that involved embedding an icon on your blog that if used to click through to the Kindle order page and a device is actually ordered, the source blog page gets a $40 Amazon credit. Just 10 clicks and your Kindle has paid for itself! SmugBlog also has a review, although that blogger admits to spending more time using it to look for books rather than reading one, which they finally get around to at the end of the day.

Another positive review from Robert Love, someone who didn't expect to like it as much as he did. He points out something I've been wondering about, though. If this is primarily a reading device, why is the keyboard so big? I get the need for an alpha interface, it is easier to search through what's on the device if you can type in a word rather than scroll everything. But I suspect that the real purpose of that keyboard is to encourage shopping, surfing, and whatever else Amazon will make money off of beyond the purchase of the books.

That brings us to price. Yep, $400 is expensive for almost anyone who isn't a gadget geek or someone who already favors digital readers. I don't think they'll convert many conventional readers at that price. The $9.99 per book price is great, if they have want you want. About 75% of the books I read I get for free (okay, I get them for paying property taxes) from the local library. And their collection goes light years beyond Amazons. I doubt that is going to change in my life time (despite Google's plan to put every written word online).

I'd say the Kindle (and that is a strange name - kindling, right?) is a step towards the day fewer books are printed because more are being bought digitally, but it's a small step. It's not going to change how most people read.

Books I'm looking forward to reading

The first is The Book of Other People, edited by Zadie Smith. Due out in mid-December, the book is a collection of character studies and short stories by some of the best writers working today. InTheNews.co.uk has the entire list of contributing authors as well as a sample and short review. Although I'm looking forward to new Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers and Andrew O'Hagan, as well as discovering some new good authors, it's the fact that the book focuses on character is what really excites me.

The second, which I really hope to get on CD from the library, is Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin. I've never read an interview with Martin where I wasn't impressed by how intelligent and funny he is, and I'm curious how he got that way. I've been equally impressed with his writing, both the essays and the fiction, and that brings up a very funny alphabet book he's just had publishedThe Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z! I'd not recommend it to actually teach the English alphabet, but if you're already confident in your letters, it's a blast to read. (Bonus link, Steve Martin and the illustrator of the alphabet book on NPR a couple weeks ago. Have a listen, have a smile.)

Man Booker Prize awarded, but there's better news than that!

The winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize was announced today. It's Anne Enright's The Gathering, which I haven't read yet, but do have on order from my local library. It sounds like a good book and I'm looking forward to reading it.

But what's the better news? Everyone might end up being able to read all of the Man Booker shortlist books for free, online, if the Booker Prize Foundation gets their way. According to The TimesOnline, the good people at the foundation are negotiating with the publishers of the books to put the books, every single word, online for worldwide download. I think that's a very cool thing. Inevitably, there's always one of these books each year that doesn't get published in the US, and the current pound/dollar exchange rate has completely stopped my purchases of books from the UK. I hope that they're successful with this plan.