E-Book News, In Brief

According to Amazon.com's own self-serving press release, the Kindle is selling so well that they're having trouble keeping up with the requests. But word on the web is that the pink Sony Reader may be the gift du jour for digital dames this Valentine's Day.

In semi-related news, when author/blogger/sex-educator Violet Blue approached Steve Jobs at MacWorld, he not only dissed her request for a picture as "rude," he went on to diss the Kindle as irrelevant, stating, "It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year."
Although not very kind (or factually correct: the ratio of non-readers is closer to 25%), Jobs' verbal smackdown comes as a welcome stay of execution for brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. After all, the fact that Apple (the company that made buying digital music online a simple and sleek, everyday affair) has no interest in putting out an e-book of their own can only be seen as a good thing for all of us tree-killing traditionalists.
(For a more detailed, stat-heavy diatribe, click here.)