You’re so right. I live on the Crow Indian Reservation. One of the doctors here at the lovely IHS decided to start a used book program. During a visit you can take one. They can be about any number of things. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taken one! Plus I buy from thrift stores. $200 worth for $10. And the knowledge is priceless. Fight the good fight. I got your back.

This is progress.

Looks like Amazon is already in the process of making this technology more widely and less expensively available. Seems like a pretty good commitment to getting this out to more people to me.

Alexie does shift his focus from access to author, however, in the comments re: audio text. I find it somewhat contradictory that he would be resistent to this form. While I do understand his argument, there are people with disabilities in our society who benefit greatly from books in forms other than print. While the printed text may well be the intended art form, for some, their only access is audio. The reader/listener will create their own sense of art from the work, and the author needs to allow that, not shut it out or try to control it.

I have worked with numerous text readers, and one of the tech benefits with Kindle is the reader. For people with disabilities, the Kindle is actually more affordable and easier to use than many other readers on the market, especially given its portability.

I’m not interested in a Kindle, mostly for financial reasons. Not because I can’t afford the Kindle itself, but because I don’t want to be forced to BUY everything I want to read on it. I am a dyed-in-the-wool library user. I borrow books, movies and audiobooks from the public library. My experience with downloadable audiobooks has been frustrating, because of technical crud. I have an mp3 player (not an iPod) but because my computer platform is Mac, I can’t get the Windows-platform audiobook through my computer onto my Windows-platform player. So what good is that service to me? Or anybody else whose technology doesn’t conform?

If the Kindle remains a luxury toy for people who buy books but don’t want to carry paper volumes around, and do want their new book ‘right now,’ I’m ok with that. Plenty of luxury toys I won’t ever have and can live without. If the Kindle becomes a necessity for everybody who wants to read a book, there’s a real big problem, and it’s not ok at all.

Kudos to Sherman Alexie for thinking and caring about all readers, not just the ones who can pay.

Even in the good old US of A, cell phones represent an incredible opportunity for those who may not otherwise seek out or afford old fashioned books to read. There are lots of e-books (and audio books for that matter) available via public domain sites such as Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org) and librivox (http://librivox.org/).

Some interesting articles on the subject of cell phones and literacy:

Worldwide cellphone use hits 60 percent, developing nations largely to thank http://bit.ly/WIQ13

Gadget & Tech News » Are Cell Phones Our Last Hope for Literacy? http://bit.ly/1ae1×0

Driving Literacy Up Using Cell Phones: UNESCO & Mobilink Join Forces | State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

It’s unfortunate that there is such growing divisiveness around the subject of how one reads. It really takes the focus off of what is important — reading itself.

Very well replied. My admittedly over-the-top attempt to remove politics from the discussion entirely was just a (perhaps misguided) attempt to focus the discussion to a bit narrower field.

I completely agree that the democratizing of information, free speech, etc. have nothing to do with corporate goals. Neither do books, in any format. They’re just products. The corporate goal is dollars. That’s it. Where my problem with demonizing Amazon comes in is that I don’t think we have any more right to infringe on their legal profitability than they do to infringe on our right to choose from multiple media formats. Clearly most individuals come down on the “anti-Amazon” side, but the reality is that this is a moral stalemate unless you want to abandon capitalism as an economic system (which I understand many people do, but I’m not one of them.)

The only way to reign in Amazon is to exercise our rights as consumers and not purchase anything from them. Hit them in the bottom line. My inherent cynicism leads me to believe this is a pipe dream however. Just look at Wal-Mart.

“Someone who works in publishing” means exactly that. As it turns out, I work for a small non-profit book publisher (albeit in the marketing department!) and believe me there’s plenty of Amazon=evil sentiment here, but Amazon has also done a lot *outside* of the Kindle to facilitate the distribution of the written word far and wide, making relatively obscure or academic books you’d never find at Borders (or your favorite indie book store) available to a lot more people.