Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Kindle launched big, but will it keep flying? I first read about Amazon's new digital book gizmo on a Wall Street Journal section front heading into the Thanksgiving holiday. Then, on my first venture out into the holiday retail whirl, the device slammed me upside the head courtesy of its Newsweek cover story. Talk about a Christmas coup! At every book store and big box I visited there was a mob of spend happy consumers, there was Newsweek and there was Kindle on its cover. Jeff Bezos, reward your marketing team by waiving their Amazon shipping fees ... forever!

At the health club, I got around to actually reading the Newsweek piece. Maybe it was just the gym-generated adrenaline, but I was jazzed. All those thousands of book titles at my fingertips. A more environmentally-friendly way of distributing the written word. A design that recalls the shape and feel of a paperback, giving the gizmo an instant retro twinkle before it even catches on. Talk about preemptive strike!

But then, when I was back on the shopping trail, I got to thinking about the appeal of good old fashioned books. My holiday gift list includes at least a dozen books for mom, dad, brother Ramone and the like. I bet only a quarter of those books will actually be read. The others will just stand handsomely on a shelf. And that doesn't bother me, because displaying a book is part of the pleasure of owning a book. The trophy book. We all have'em. An ad buddy has a whole army of terribly hip and just plain terrible marketing books lined up in his office, supposedly read and digested but frankly not looking very dog-eared.

After a laudable launch, can Kindle overcome the decidedly non-digital joys of buying a real book?