This Article Is Interesting

Laura Miller’s critique of the iBooks store is fascinating for about 10 million reasons that I don’t have the time or mental energy to go into right now.

The problem that she describes—how iBooks categorization is total trash, finding book and getting recommendations is hopeless, etc.—ties directly into the quote that I’ve mentioned on here at least 55 times (and which Richard Nash has theorized about quite a bit) that “the 20th century was about sorting supply. The 21st is going to be about sorting demand.”

Here’s Miller’s closing paragraph:

It’s become much easier and cheaper to publish a book in the past decade, but the explosion of titles on the market has its drawbacks. When faced with an overwhelming number of choices, most book buyers tend to become less adventurous, not more so. They have increasingly gravitated toward known quantities like bestsellers and widely celebrated or publicized books. The ideal guide to getting out of that rut is still a thoughtful bookseller, librarian or friend (or even critic!) whose taste you know and trust, but such people aren’t always easy to find, and even when found, they’re not omniscient. Good metadata, treated with respect and care, may be your only compass in some of the more exotic provinces of the vast world of books. It’s the little, geeky detail that makes sure a voice from the margins still has a chance to get heard.

Interesting . . .