[tcv]

A p-book incident happened to me last week that has me wondering if it can somehow be replicated with an e-book?

Here's how it worked:

My wife and I are in Boston. I am working remotely and she's visiting her company. (We both live in Houston.) While in the office, she spied a bunch of small paperbacks folks left around for other people to read. It's an informal library, of sorts, though without any sort of organization. You read a book and liked it? Drop it off and maybe someone else will enjoy it.

She picked up two paperbacks (p-backs?), Wicked among them. I've seen the book off-and-on for years, but didn't truly know what it was about. The back-cover intrigued me. I read it and then the book. Wow. And I never really cared for The Wizard of Oz.

The publisher has made no money off my reading of this book, however it has definitely put me on to more titles by the same author. The publisher will get something from me.

But in an entirely e-world, which is what many of us envision and some of us want, how would my wife have discovered Wicked at all? I don't imagine people will have left flash-drives or SD cards of books on a shelf for other employees to peruse. Even if they did, wouldn't the DRM have prevented me from reading the book? (And were there no DRM, would that not be "piracy?") And what if I didn't have the right reader?

What's more, aren't some publishers especially keen to stop this kind of loaning? To them, my reading of Wicked is a lost sale. Even if I wind up buying most books by Maguire, I still will not have bought that FIRST one.

So, I am back to my original question: Could this p-moment -- this discovering of an unknown (to me) gem of a book on a shelf populated with other enjoyed books -- be replicated entirely in e?