Robert Scoble reads mainly on Kindle and mobile devices, finding physical books from PR firms inefficient. He sees the traditional book industry disrupted by closing bookstores and rising demand for digital formats, and says his attention increasingly favors shorter content like Twitter and Facebook.
Yeah. Last question. Do you still read books? I have a lot of books. Do I read them. I read them on the Kindle. What's really ironic is the pr. I have a lot of books that are even on a shelf. The PR industry keeps sending me paper books. It's like, dudes, the only time I have to read is in a plane and. Or. Or when I'm away from my home. You know, when I'm on vacation or when I'm, you know, on the beach and just want to sit there for a couple hours, that's when I have time to read a book and get into something deep. And they keep handing me paper, which is heavy. And not to mention, it's expensive to distribute. They had to mail that thing to me. It costs many times more to make a paper book and press ink on paper and get that paper into my hands and take room in my office, then putting it on my Kindle app, which I could read on my phone, which I could read on my tablet, which I could read on my big screen here. I have Kindle running here, too. I don't understand the book industry. The book industry is really screwed up. And this is an example of an industry that's going to radically change because of the forces that are happening right now. Because bookstores are going away and we're demanding books be on our devices, right? I see people on planes reading Kindle books all the time on a tablet or even on a phone, right? Who imagined you'd want to read a book on a phone? But that happens all the time. And Amazon's making a lot of money off of it. But the PR industry for the book companies still send me paper. It's like, who the hell is in charge here? Who's thinking about this? What's going on? I would read many times more books if you sent them to me on digital format. So, yeah, I do read books, but less and less frequently because I'm more into this snacky kind of media, you know, the Twitter and the Facebook, and I'm more into. And I also go around and interview book authors. Just the other day, I met Amy Tan, you know, and I was at her house. She wrote the Joy Luck. The Joy Luck Club, right? And I told a few friends I met Amy Tan. They didn't even know who she was. I was like, she's a famous author. She won awards. She got rich because of this book she wrote in the 1980s. And you don't even know who she is. It's very interesting, but I hang out with book authors and they tell me about their books. And then once in a while I'll read them. But my life is a bit weird. It's more experiential than having to read.
