I generally love her articles for Salon.com (her reviews of TV shows are never less than very clever...and sometimes brutally devastating).

Here, she ponders our current information age:

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/frontline/index.html?story=/ent/tv/iltw/2010/01/30/frontline_digital_nation

Somewhat off topic, but it is something that's eating at me:

A few days ago Apple introduced the (very unfortunately named) IPad.  There was much rejoicing among those present at Mr. Job's announcement, even if many critics subsequently found reason to complain about the machine's deficits.

But the thing that sent shivers down my spine was that Steven Jobs felt this machine would be a rival to other e-readers.

Those who read this blog, and I know the number vary wildly from day to day, do so, I hope, because I offer interesting links to interesting articles.

I am also an author of, to date, five works available on amazon.com (the link to them can be found on the upper right of this page).

For my latest novel, Mechanic, I decided to release it both in regular print and through Amazon's Kindle.  I figured that would open up the possibilities of wider readership.

What I didn't realize was that it also opened me up...possibly...to the dreaded reality of illegal downloading.  One day, either a google or bing search by me found one of those file sharing sites that allegedly had the book (in four different versions) there for download, and, according to the site, the novel was downloaded a little over 26,000 times.  At $5.99 a pop for the legal download at Amazon, a purposely low price, it nonetheless means I'm out an awful large amount of money...

...if this is indeed the case.  I haven't downloaded the files and can't help but wonder if indeed it is my book there, or someone simply labeled a file as such and posted who knows what in its place.

So, as I near completion of my latest novel (I'm hoping to finish it up in the next month) and will soon enough post it on Amazon, I'm left wondering if its worthwhile to offer the book via its Kindle services, or if by doing so I'm essentially slitting my own wrists.

Like the music industry, it appears the book market is also facing off against the juggernaut that is the internet.