Jetwhine Editor Kindled; Escapes Unharmed

I had a call from one of my graduate school professors a few weeks ago who wanted to know how my book was doing. You remember that book McGraw Hill published last summer … a Professional Pilot Career Guide? The book is a dandy volume for anyone struggling with the tough career questions that will help them decide whether a cockpit career is for them. I’m told the book looks and reads great. Of course the marketing help from McGraw Hill has been pretty dismal so when I heard about a new delivery method for my book I was all ears.

Have you been Kindled my professor asks? Little did I know that I had indeed been Kindled without my knowledge. So perhaps McGraw Hill isn’t as bad as I thought … but I think the jury is still out on that one.

The Kindle is Amazon’s new electronic book reader. The design offers a bright screen that makes the text appear as if it was actually printed on paper. In fact, Amazon calls the product inside the machine electronic paper. The kindle weighs in at about half a pound and is capable of holding as many as 200 books, although obviously there is only one volume I can think of that should come installed.

The Kindle is wireless so adding new books is a snap. And with only 115,000 titles in the Kindle format, I’m pretty honored to be running in the same circle as some of those folks on the NY Times best seller list.

The Kindle also lets you stay in touch with your favorite blogs via an RSS feed. That means there are no more excuses for not reading your daily dose of Jetwhine.

I’m told that when you solve one problem and you often create another. That’s one of Amazon’s big problems.

The Kindle is pricey, $399 in most places which leads to the next problem. The darned things are almost impossible to find anywhere.

But if you do find one, let me know what you think. In the meantime, I’m going to try a little PR magic on the people at Amazon. Maybe they’ll let me test one for a year or so.