20100603

Reading Dad?

Amazon, in the same spot where it's had an ad for Kindle for the last year or so, now has one that says, "Is Dad a Reader? Give Kindle..."

You'd think Amazon would know, better than anyone, what the likelihood of Dad being a reader is, though. I remember hearing on NPR a couple of years ago that the average American male doesn't read a complete book after finishing high school. (They were interviewing an author who'd written a book about the circumstances leading to that. I wish I could remember the author or the book.)

As you can tell, by the fact that I remember it from so long ago, I was more than a little shocked at this. Well, shocked and disturbed. As someone who's read a book a month or more since at least elementary school (and that's not counting all the technical books, which are almost never read cover-to-cover), and who first read The Lord of the Rings when he was eight, this absolutely blew my mind. Actually, since most of my friends also read regularly, this was really outside of my experience.

Every so often, you get a reminder (sometimes pleasant, sometimes painful) of how far outside of the average your own existence can be. This was one of those times.

In any event, getting back to the point, what does this say about Amazon's ad? I gotta say it sounds either stupid or disingenuous, and I'm leaning toward the latter given that I can't imagine Amazon wouldn't know something that fundamental about the book market.

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