Secret Trucks Delivering Books
Might Apple be preparing to take on Amazon for the ebook market?
There's something I keep hearing, and I don't think I'd rank it as high as a rumor, but it's an interesting story that I keep hearing, that for awhile, trucks loaded with books would arrive at a loading dock on the Apple campus, and offload big, big, big, big, huge loads of books, and then the trucks would leave empty. And Apple does not have a 100,000-book employee library there on the Apple campus. So one is prone to believe that they're doing something with these books, such as turning them into text for some purpose we can only guess at. There's been a long-standing rumor that Apple has been silently preparing to open a bookstore on the iTunes store, and they want to make sure that they have a very large stock of electronic titles when they do open.
Three reactions: Oh yeah! Oh no! and Squeeeeee!
Oh yeah, a bookstore on my mac akin to iTunes would rock.
Oh no, I hope this doesn't mean Apple and Amazon each try to corner mutually exclusive platforms and formats on their respective devices (Kindle, Netbook, whatever). I was hoping the Kindle ap for the iPhone was an omen of fuzzy bunnines and sunshine, but it might end up being Beta vs VHS all over again. How tiresome.
And, finally, trucks loaded with books would arrive at a loading dock... offload big, big, big, big, huge loads of books, and then the trucks would leave empty... Squeeeeeee! Whether or not this is true, I love the image. Can I get secret trucks to offload big, big, big, huge loads of books at my house too? Please? Please?
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Oh, wait. I do have that.
My stepdad has been dropping by lately with boxes and boxes of my late Grandmother's library. This, however, is not the joyfest it should be, (1) because it makes me think of my gramdmama, which makes me sad, (2) the books were abused by the person who stored them, and are now moldy, broken, completely disorganized, and (3) most of the books are in German or French so I can't read them.
I'm going to scan them into the computer. Then I'm going to find one which is (a) out of copywrite and (b) in English, and add zombies to the story. Then I'll design my own ebook reader too, totally exclusive and incompatible with any other ebook reader in the world, so if you want to read Zombies Attack Heidleberg, you'll have to buy my reader. BWAHAHAHAHA!
Comments
Well thanks for that. All my cubies are now looking at me for giggling like an idiot to myself. :)
Seriously though; an interesting rumor, this one! Having an iTunes-based ebook store would bring ebooks to the masses... the push that's needed to really get ebooks into the mainstream?