The Reading Edge Podcast

I interviewed Seth Godin this morning via Skype.  He is the author of Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?, published last month for Kindle, nook, Sony Reader, and hardcover.  It’s a great read, and if you purchase it on Kindle by about March 1 you’ll receive a free personal addendum, Insubordinate, in which Seth describes several people who qualify as linchpins.  What’s a linchpin?  That’s someone who has found his or her true work, as an artist does, and is overcoming the resistance of the lizard brain to actually ship stuff that matters, because it’s original and given freely.

In the early going, my own lizard brain resisted with a couple of clever arguments (noted in this blog post) to Seth’s exhortation, which will come as no surprise to him.  Lizard-like resistance is what a linchpin always faces and overcomes.

In addition to his new book, we talked about Seth’s critique of the traditional publishing industry and his vision of how Amazon, or someone, could remake the eBook platform into something much more compelling as a way for authors and readers to connect.

I prepared for our conversation by watching videos of Seth’s TED talk in May, 2009, and his presentation at last year’s O’Reilly Tools of Change conference.

Here is a complete list of Seth’s previous books.

Click here to download this episode.

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James McQuivey of Forrester Research

On the Monday after the weekend when Amazon and Macmillan faced off in a dramatic battle over eBook pricing, I turned to James McQuivey, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, for his perspective on who won, what the stakes are, and what might lie ahead.

James says his contacts at other publishers are disappointed that this turned into a mud fight, but he suggests there will be benefits from having the issue finally out in the open.  He also shares his thoughts on how Apple’s new iPad figures in to all this.

I’ll have the second half of this interview on The Kindle Chronicles episode 81, which will be uploaded as usual on Friday, February 5.  In that portion, James will discuss what he and his teammates at Forrester are calling “The Kindle Flame,” by which they mean the next generation of Kindle that might, if it gets certain things right, set the eBook market fully ablaze as opposed to merely kindled.

Click here to download this episode.

This is the conclusion of my January 27, 2010, interview with New York Times technology reporter Brad Stone.  For the first part of the interview, please check out Episode 80 of my other podcast, The Kindle Chronicles.  We spoke the evening after Brad had attended Apple’s unveiling of the iPad.

In this segment, Brad looks ahead at Amazon’s next moves and comments.  He’s found 46 new jobs posted at Amazon’s Lab126, the group that makes and advances the Kindle. Brad says at one point, “The Kindle tablet may be right around the corner.”

Following the interview, I’ve included a fair-use excerpt of audio from Steve Jobs’s comments about the Kindle and the new iBooks app which will come on the iPad, setting up a high-stakes strategic battle between Apple and Amazon.  Does Steve sound as if he’s got his heart in this fight?  Listen, and decide.

Click here to download this episode.