Case One: 22 year old man. PC. No interest in Apple. Buys concert tickets. Reads physical books but doesn't care if they're used. Gets movies & music & tv shows, as far as I can surmise, free. The movies and tv are particularly murky: music is trickier … if he really likes an artist, like Joel Plaskett, he'll buy his cds and encourage everyone else to buy too. Same with books: he'll try to get everyone to read a book or a series he enjoys. His iPod does not seem to be permanently attached to his body.

Case Two: 20 year old college student, female. She has had access to great free file-sharing software both in high school and now in college but possibly through sheer force of habit, she is a devoted purchaser of iTunes. She has an Apple computer. Also buys some cds. Wants new books from favourite authors but that's on a every month or so basis. Will read used. Can't see her reading a book online (too much like school, not that “new” book feeling she wants). Does she watch “movies” & tv gratis — probably but loves going to the movies. She is much more of a consumer than her brother.

On some level both of them recognize that if they don't support musicians (through purchasing their music, going to their concerts), the musicians won't thrive. They don't seem to have that visceral sort of relationship with authors. It's difficult to have a discussion with the younger generation about the consuming of an entertainment product for which you have not paid — I think they think that their enthusiastic championing of a movie or an internet only product (like Trogdor/Homestarrunner) will eventually lead to financial success for the developers. And I have bought my share of Homestarrunner t-shirts.

Will continue to think about this! Certainly in my household books are not going to become the electronic equivalent of iTunes … or so I say now.

Of course, we evolved by realising that if we kept the whole tribe well-fed we'd hunt a lot more mammoth. But we easily forget that and revert to zero-sum. The fact is that there is virtually nothing in the random, chaotic real world, laced as it is with moments of cruelty, chaos, and kindness, that works to zero-sum. And pulishing is no exception.

Just as it should be obvious that another author's success with a literary debut about the Berlin Wall makes it more likely rather than less that I'll sell copies of Songs from the Other Side of the wall, so it should be obvious that the expansion of the ebook market will lead to an increase in the overall unit sales of books. Partly because ebooks will reach people who'd never have read anything in old format. Partly because true fans like to have things in multiple format.

As for the iPod moment – what you rightly say here points to the same conclusion as the non zero-sumness of the book market. The answer for anyone wanting to promote 1. hardware 2. software 3. a new format or even 4. their own books is not to promote that hardware/software/format/imprint/book but to promote literature full stop. Stage one is to get people excited about stories. The rest will follow.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by glecharles: New Post: A Quick Note on the Fabled “iPod Moment” – http://loudpoet.com/aLT…