One on One: Jason Merkoski and the View of E-Books from the Inside
Q. You also say, in discussing the tech companies’ power: “What moral or literary sensibilities do the executives at Amazon have? What about the retailers at Barnes & Noble or Google or Apple? You have to ask yourself whether you trust these men.” Well, do you?
A. There are three dimensions of trust here. Do I trust retailers not to censor books, do I trust them with my personal data, and do I trust them to curate great books for me to read? Frankly, I don’t trust the executives at any e-book retailer when it comes to censorship. I know many of them. If push came to shove, I think most of these execs would rather pull e-books from the store, effectively censoring them, if that would avoid bad press. These are major retailers, not your quirky corner bookstores. They’re manned by former management consultants in clean shirts and pressed Dockers, not eccentric book-lovers with beards and cats.
