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content/blog/2011-11-01-todays-apparently-the-day.md

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+---
+title: "Today's (Apparently) the Day"
+date: '2011-11-01T09:12:08-04:00'
+permalink: /todays-apparently-the-day/
+tags:
+    - 'planned obsolescence'
+    - publishing
+---
+
+According to Amazon, at least: today is the day that [Planned Obsolescence](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0814727883) has been released!
+
+The link above is to the paperback version; here’s a link to the [Kindle edition](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005TIGKSY). And it’s the existence of the Kindle edition that makes the whole “release day” thing so amusing (to me, at least).
+
+I got my first copy of the paperback about four weeks ago now. Granted, I got it the very day it arrived at the press, and it does take a couple of weeks for Amazon to get its first shipment, to get that shipment into its system, and to get ready to start shipping them out. So while I kinda expected them to update the book’s page from listing a November 1 release date to reflect its in-stock-ness before now, I wasn’t terribly surprised that it didn’t happen.
+
+But… the Kindle edition. Has also been there, more or less ready to go. Folks even pre-ordered it! And apparently are receiving it today. Virtual copies of my book are zipping out across the WhisperNet, arriving like presents in people’s digital libraries.
+
+Which is completely awesome, of course, but it does make me wonder: November 1 was not intended by NYU Press to be an official laydown date; there was no publisher-enforced embargo on sales, or reviews, or anything else before that. And given that one of the virtues of the Kindle is that you can have that text *right now*, why hold it back? Why turn what was meant to be an estimate by the press into an official release date?
+
+It makes today pretty nifty for me personally, but I’m wondering whether it makes any kind of sense otherwise.
+