There are several levels of wrongness layered in this Times op-ed:
BEING president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me. But now I am president of the Authors Guild, whose mission is to sustain book-writing as a viable occupation. This borders on quixotic, given all the new ways of not getting paid that new technology affords authors. A case in point: Amazon’s Kindle 2, which was released yesterday.
Let’s recap the situation:
Amazon.com, the largest seller of books in the world, has created a way for people who find books, magazines, and other printed versions of the written word too inconvenient to enjoy the works of authors. All this in the midst of declining print sales, consolidation of publishers, and a global recession.
Yeah, if I was the head of the Authors Guild (where’s the plural possessive apostrophe, by the way?), I’d want to put the brakes on that, too.
Leave a comment