Excerpts from the Book

Here's a model that doesn't work anymore, the published-in-a-newspaper-or-magazine book excerpt. I was reminded of this by Arnon Mishkin, my old friend and colleague, who posted the following on Twitter yesterday:

"Read NYMag excerpt from "Game Change" on the web. It made me buy the book. And I don't need to buy the magazine. Make sense?"

Exactly! He read the excerpt on line (for free). He bought the book on Amazon. He didn't buy New York magazine. Which is where the excerpt was published. Game over, no?

P.S.: I too wanted to read the book, so I went to Amazon to order the download to my Kindle. No such luck. You can't do that until late February, says Amazon. Huh? You know and I know that Amazon would sell me the Kindle version of the book in a heart beat. So it's not Amazon that's set this weird, arbitrary February date for Kindle download, it's the publisher. How dumb is that?