The book battles of Obama and McCain
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Amazon has opened a special Election 2008 bookstore as a place to buy all the McCain and Obama books you want. As we noted yesterday, Barack Obama’s books are outselling John McCain’s; Sarah Palin is outselling Joe Biden.
Now it’s time to add Mrs. McCain and Mrs. Obama into the mix. ‘Cindy McCain: Elegance, Good Will and Hope for a New America’ is a new biography by Alicia Colon; Elizabeth Lightfoot is the author of the biography ‘Michelle Obama: Grace and Intelligence in a Time of Change.’ The catch is that both brand new, potential-first-lady biographies are available only via the Kindle.
This means two things: that readers will get their hands on the e-books before the hard copies will be available, and that Amazon has an exclusive for its e-reader. Litblogger Booksquare points out that ‘the non-Kindle e-reader population vastly exceeds aggregate Kindle ownership.’ She writes:
Your customer wants the book now or as close to now as is possible. Not only should readers who want ebooks get the format they prefer, but readers of print books shouldn’t have to wait so long for books that might not be relevant weeks from now. Things change too fast to play by the old rules.
Readers who want the print version of the Michelle Obama biography will have to wait, according to the Amazon press release, until sometime later this year. As for the print version of the Cindy McCain bio? The press release says, ‘the book will only go to print if John McCain wins the election.’
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo credits: Cindy McCain, WireImage.com / Michelle Obama, Getty Images
