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Today in publishing and literature: Amazon's revenues from downloads are estimated at $1.12 million, defending Jonathan Franzen's tough talk on Twitter and e-books, and a Courtney Love tell-all is being shopped.
Dispatches from the Franzen Wars Jonathan Franzen's recent criticism of e-readers and Twitter may have felt reactionary and short-sighted, but give him credit for being one of the few authors with a genuine online following to voice fears about what technology is doing to human communication. "He wants to make a case for the way people should read, for the very meaning of honesty and expression and truth," argues Salon culture editor David Daley. "He wants to find a way beyond shame, beyond worrying about what others think — for the sake of getting closer to the truth in his work." In other words, Franzen may be running the risk od biting the digital hand that feeds him, but that's at least part of what people value in him. [Salon]
Kindle Single Sales According to Amazon's internal numbers, the company has sold "over two million" of the pint-sized books since first introducing the line 14 months ago. Is that good? Maybe. On the one hand, 2 million is a lot of anything to sell in a given year. But Amazon declined to reveal just how much revenue those sales generated, though Paid Content's Laura Hazard Owen crunches the numbers and concludes that "with an average price of $1.87 multiplied by two million, a rough estimate of Amazon’s 30-percent cut is $1.12 million." Not huge huge, but a nice figure when you consider the Kindle Single filled a market void and gives people just one more reason to go out and buy a Kindle. [Paid Content]
