It's Time for Book Publishers to Play Dirty

So says an employee at Powell's Books for the Chicago Tribune against e-books.

From the piece...

Last month a fellow bibliophile, someone with whom I work at a bookstore in Portland, Ore., described one of Kindle's newest TV commercials. In it, a woman in red struts past her friend who asks where she's going. "I want to get a book that came out today," she says. When he tells her that he does too, she suggests he join her at the bookstore.

"I'm good," he says, then pushes a button on his Kindle. "Got it."

"It made me want to run out and buy one," my co-worker said, "and then want to cry." I know exactly what she meant: Even to a devout bibliophile, the ad is so effective that it arouses conflicting urges to own a Kindle and resist it on principle.

Another issue the commercial raises is one so obvious that I am shocked I haven't heard it before: Why hasn't America's publishing industry launched an ad campaign as seductive and aggressive as the Kindle's? Not to market front-list titles or authors, but to market the paper book form itself? In other words, sell consumers on the exclusive pleasures and qualities traditional books offer that e-books cannot. That's exactly what Kindle's TV commercials have been doing, saying here's what we can do that regular books can't.