A specter is haunting the internet, and I think it’s even scarier than the chal­lenge of getting people to pay money. It’s the challenge of get ting them to pay attention. I think it’s only going to get worse—which is to say, better, because we as internet users and blog readers and tweet slingers will have more cool, weird, interesting stuff to look at all the time, and it will just keep coming faster and getting cooler and fragments and—ack!

I can tell you one thing: When I’m looking for a new book on my Kindle and told I have to wait four months for the e-book version, I won’t be heading to the bookstore. Instead, I’ll click the back button and buy one of the 360,000 other e-books available now.

Didn’t anyone at these publishing companies watch what happened to the music and newspaper industries over the last 10 years?

Also, a best-selling business writer has taken ebook rights away from his print publisher in an exclusive arrangement with Amazon.

This is what I want more of from the Internet — original poems bundled with a trusted recommendation. So much of what we do online is still commentary, still meta. I want more new source material online. I want the stuff itself.

Which is exactly what I need, don’t ya know — a few more ideas for web sites.

Update 5 p.m. This got me thinking about whether best seller information is even available for small press poetry books. Yea verily it is, from Small Press Distribution.

Update 5:08 p.m. You guys know what a mashup is, right?

In my neck of the woods, Matt and Katy Henrichsen run a reading series that always brings together an eclectic mix of new and established poets. Their press, Cannibal Books, puts out beautiful handmade chapbooks and broadsides as well.

Yeah, it is pretty silly. I wrote that book of poems and then nothing happened at all. I was happy to have written it, and I wanted people to read it, but it didn’t help me to get a job or anything; nothing came of it. The novel, on the other hand, was this huge sort of fanfare.

(via Bookslut)

It’s not difficult to guess that we at Linebreak have some sizable bets out on the e-literature horse.

Confession: I’m a book hoarder.

My bookshelves runneth over. I keep books on side tables, on the floor, on the defunct entertainment center shoved into the corner. Books are what we’ve had to work with, sure, but I’ll admit I’ve got real affection for the dusty, crumbly things.

Why don’t I have a Kindle (or its shinier, brighter sibling Kindle 2)? I’m broke, but who isn’t? I like holding books. I like turning pages. Johnathon is likely glowering at what sound like a technophobe’s reservations.

It’s what we deal with daily when we consider what we do on this site. Will we be forgiven for not having a body? For our own part, I hope so. Is reading poetry in a digital format different than reading a novel in the same way? I think so. Poetry’s manageable. It’s not Moby-Dick.

I don’t know how to react to Jacob Weisberg’s recent Slate article: is the Kindle the future? How long until we embrace our digital overlords? I have a feeling we’ll see soon enough.