Read Burning the Page: The eBook revolution and the future of reading for Free Online

annotate a given ebook, but also comment on one another’s annotations. Best of all, it works for a variety of different ebook formats, and it’s as easy to use as logging on to Twitter or Facebook.
    By working across multiple ebook vendors and being brand neutral, ReadSocial (or one of its competitors) has the potential to become the de facto annotation engine for ebooks. Such a service may not preserve decals from my Pinewood Derby race car or smells from my mom’s cookbook or, for that matter, annotations from any print book, but it may pave the way toward creating compelling conversations in the margins of ebooks.
    And after all, isn’t that what we’re looking for? To find a kindred spirit in the pages of a book—the voice of the author or perhaps another reader—to carry on a conversation with? In this spirit, why not connect with others right now? Click on this link to meet a kindred book lover through the conversation about this chapter online.
    http://jasonmerkoski.com/eb/3.html

Launching the Kindle
    Working at Amazon was like taking a step back in time to Seattle’s pioneer roots, back when Seattle was the gateway to the Yukon gold rush. Working on Kindle was like living in the Wild West.
    For projects that broke new ground, like Kindle, there didn’t seem to be any law, any sheriff, or any real consequences for making wrong decisions, because nobody knew the right ones. People seemed to wear their six-shooters out in the open, taking potshots at one another while hiding behind Donkey Kong machines. When vice presidents argued in the hallways, trigger fingers twitching, I could almost imagine a tumbleweed blowing between them.
    It was also impossible to tell reality from fiction. No outsiders had seen the Kindle because it was created in a perfect vacuum from the very beginning. Everyone was trying to do the right thing, and no ideas were off the table. Nothing was too strange to consider. People who thought fast often got their way and ruled the day. It was an early Wild West of ideas and innovation. It was crazy and anarchic, and I liked it.
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    Download a copy of The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. It’s the book that all of Kindle’s hardware code names came from. The book is about a character named Fiona and her “illustrated primer,” a machine designed to look like a book but with links to all libraries, all TV shows, and all human knowledge. (Jeff originally wanted the Kindle code names to come from Star Trek , since he’s such a Trekkie, but more literate minds prevailed.) The book is a treasure trove of other code names for Kindle hardware: Nell, Miranda, and Turing.
    So the first time I got a Kindle, it wasn’t called a Kindle but a “Fiona.”
    Though primitive by today’s standards, my original Kindle—one of the first Fionas made for select Amazon employees—still works like a charm. True, my Fiona is turning the yellow-gray color of smokers’ teeth, the same way that once white yesteryear computers start to turn an upsetting beige. But it still works, even though it’s been manhandled and chucked many times into my backpack, tossed into many suitcases for trans-Atlantic flights, and left on my truck’s dashboard in the sun for months. And once while walking through Cupertino, California—a city where everyone drives—I got hit by a car while crossing the street, because nobody expects pedestrians in the heart of Silicon Valley. I fell and sprained my arm. But even though my Fiona clattered to the street and got run over by one of the car’s wheels, it still works as great as always.
    Needless to say, I love my Kindle.
    My original Kindle job had me creating and managing the ebook conversion process—the messy method by which print books are turned into digital ones.
    When thinking about how ebooks are created, it’s best to envision a sausage factory. Meat comes in one end, machinery packages it, and sausage comes out the other end. At the ebook factory, you start in