The Kindle Author Who Has Never Seen a Kindle

In January, I self-published my suspense novel, selecting to include it in the KDP Select Program and making it available exclusively on Amazon. In the month of March I ran a five-day free promotion, one which resulted, temporarily at least, in the book's achieving bestseller status. Over 8,000 people all over the world downloaded Valley of Thracians to their Kindles, and some of them have actually read the book.

All of those potential readers have seen something that I haven't - what my book looks like on a Kindle device. I don't own a Kindle. I have basically written a book for a medium that I have never seen.

While my book is also available in paperback (published by CreateSpace in February), I knew from the start that my primary target audience would be Kindle owners.

Someone else who never saw a Kindle was Canadian communications philosopher Marshall McLuhan, who in the 1960s coined a very popular phrase = "The Medium is the Message." As noted on Wikipedia, McLuhan said that "a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself."

According to John C. Dvorak, writing last year on PCMag.com, writers in the modern era must present their information differently "because the medium interferes with the message." Dvorak says that "a completely new medium has appeared and established itself... It's called the Kindle."

Dvorak states that the Kindle is "not just a different way of reading books... Rather, it is a completely new medium that psychologically changes the way we read."

How does a Kindle change the way we read? "The Kindle is one page that is refreshed to another page," Dvorak tells us. "There is no physical reminder that you have a long way to go to finish the book. It eliminates all sorts of psychological aversions from the reading process."

The Kindle has changed the way we read, but it is not alone in having accomplished this transformation. Today, people read books on their iPads and tablets, and of course on their laptops and desktop computers as well. While I don't own a Kindle, I have read a number of digital books using the Kindle for PC program.

I am a late adapter, if I adapt to a new technology at all. I previously wrote how the mobile phone I carry with me at all times is anything but smart. I have recently considered purchasing a Kindle, but feared that I would be falling behind the times with a single purpose device. In the end, I've elected to buy a tablet, giving me a handheld unit that will enable me to read digital books comfortably, as well as interact with the Internet when I see fit to do so.

I guess I'm not a Kindle author after all. I'm an author who writes for the digital age, and I don't care on what device my books are read. My hope, as an author, is to get my books onto the newest medium, whichever medium it may be. And that's my message.