Abibliophobia (noun)

Definition: The morbid fear of running out of reading material.

This was my word of the day today from Dictionary.com and when I saw it I suddenly had insight into Amazon’s new book reader the Kindle. I may simply not be the target market of the Kindle, nor for that matter all the technology pundits who have been panning the device. And yet Amazon says they sold out quickly on the device. So who is buying the Kindle? Abibliophobes.

To test my theory I talked to one of the two co-workers who first told me of the device. They were excited. It could hold 200 books and if you ran out you could quickly get more? Cool. Abibliophobia. These are the sort of people that Amazon should create a 100,000 page club like the airline’s 100,000 mile club. These are voracious readers who belong to multiple book clubs.

So it may be time to admit that the Kindle is a product targeted for a set of people who Amazon knows well. Maybe they aren’t crazy. So the question I am left with is how many abibliophobes are there and do they have $400 in their pocket?

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