Burning the Page: The eBook revolution and the future of reading

digital books. Some publishers reacted better than others; some, in fact, were downright revolutionary.
    Ultimately, I think everyone who worked in those early years of ebooks was changed by the experience. We weren’t working just for paychecks. We were learning and growing. We changed from one month to the next, sort of like taking a paintbrush and a bucket of water and drawing your self-portrait on a hot sidewalk. You’d maybe be able to sketch half of your face before the water you’d already painted would start to fade and evaporate, so you’d never quite be finished.
    We’re all sidewalk portraits painted with water on a hot summer’s afternoon. And there’s a holy fervor and zeal than you can see in the eyes of the ebook revolutionaries who are working as insiders, whether they work at the publishers or the retailers or as independent software vendors and sideline pundits. It would be one thing perhaps if we were merely part of the MP3 or digital video revolution or part of TV in its early test-pattern era. But (and you know this already) there’s something sacred about books. They’re humanity’s lifeblood, these inky words and smudges that make their way into our minds. Ultimately, books are a small but essential part of the human condition. They are tapestries of birdsong, magic, and intrigue, in equal parts.
    As an evangelist, I was interacting with publishers and ebook revolutionaries outside of Amazon. I was moving the ebook revolution forward by improving ebook content. I was venturing beyond Amazon’s walled garden to plant seeds like a Johnny Appleseed for ebooks, never quite certain how these seeds would grow but certain they needed to be planted. And then those seeds would grow and bear fruit that would find its way back to Amazon and to the Kindles and ebooks I loved. This new role was a first for me and for Amazon, with its highly secretive culture. For Amazon, this move was revolutionary.

Bookmark: Burning Books
    On July 12, 1562, Diego de Landa, the Bishop of Yucatan, started a horrific bonfire. Hundreds of Mayan scrolls were tossed into the fire, as well as thousands of sacred images. Diego de Landa believed himself to be in the moral right, having found what he called “superstition and lies of the devil” in the books. He had gained the trust of the Mayans, gained access to their sacred books, but then with the might of the Spanish conquistadors behind him, he burned them all. Only three full scrolls of the formerly vast Mayan empire remain now, plus charred portions of a fourth.
    The Nazis too are known to have burned books. Jewish and “degenerate” books—including volumes by Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway—were raided from libraries by Nazi youths and consigned to flames. At least 18,000 distinct titles were identified as officially objectionable, and untold hundreds of thousands of copies were burned in well-attended public events.
    Book burning has historically been a tool used by tyrants in authority to penalize or marginalize detractors. Do you think America was more enlightened? Not really. Even though we value free speech in America, we have at times taken a tyrannical approach. During the McCarthy era of the early 1950s, it was decided that “material by any controversial persons, Communists, fellow travelers, etc.” would be removed from libraries and burned. In fact, this was enacted by presidential decree.
    It’s harder to burn ebooks.
    Burning an e-reader will cause you to choke from the fumes, so don’t do it. And while digital book burning won’t happen, a more subtle version might arise. The handful of retailers who control the distribution of digital books could choose not to make one or more books available for any number of reasons.
    Consider the time, shortly before the iPad launched in 2010, when Amazon decided to yank the “buy buttons” from books and ebooks published by Macmillan, one of the top U.S. publishers, to protest new pricing terms Macmillan wanted. Amazon removed tens of thousands of books in all.
    It was one of the brazen moves Amazon sometimes makes. Pulling the “buy button” from items in the store means that it’s not possible to click on any button to actually order a given book shown on the Amazon web page. You can see the book—it’s tantalizingly close—but you can’t buy it. As long as the buy buttons are gone, orders can’t be placed.
    It’s a money-losing proposition for Amazon and any business partner it