It’s one of those cool concepts that points to the potential of the digital age. You’re reading a Kindle book when a question comes to mind, and with the press of a few buttons, you can ask the author the question via Twitter from inside the book. Gutenberg would be blown away.

That’s the promise of Amazon’s @author initiative. But since it was rolled out in beta form a few months ago, the program hasn’t attracted a lot of interest from actual users, with relatively few questions being posed to the participating authors by the millions of Kindle users out there.

The dearth of activity is also evident on the @author_posts feed, which republishes the tweets sent by readers to authors, as well as the responses. Amazon’s main @author Twitter feed has been idle since the Aug. 30 announcement of the beta.

We asked Amazon about the status of the program, and a spokeswoman replied, “We’re actively working on improvements to this beta program with the input of the participating authors and of our customers.”

Here’s my take: For many of us, books are one of the last places we can go for a solitary experience consuming media. In a world where our “friends” seem to be joining us for nearly every activity, there’s something nice about the simplicity of straightforward reading.

One of the first things I did when reading the Steve Jobs biography on my Kindle was turn off the public notes and highlights. There are some things that I’d rather discover for myself, without the help of any virtual underscoring from my social network.

In a similar way, I think there’s a psychological hurdle that will keep people from eagerly sending a message to an author from inside a book. From a technological standpoint it’s good to see Amazon pushing boundaries, but as a reader, I’m not as enamored with the idea.

That said, I’m willing to give anything a try. To test out the @author program, I sent a message to one of the participating authors, Scott Nicholson, from inside his book, Ashes.

“Scott, how are you liking the @author program?” I tweeted from the pages of my Kindle. “How social should books be?”

To his immense credit, Nicholson responded to my off-topic question on his Amazon @author page.

Hello, Todd. I like the potential, but I don’t think we (readers and writers) have really figured out what to do with it. I see potential for more interactive things like fan fiction, pretend-casting parts for movie versions, and more of a blog-like running commentary on certain topics or themes. I think it can go beyond the typical book club discussions (which not everyone is that interested in) and allow people to share in the creation. That’s what I look forward to, when we are basically playing in the sandbox together. This is a good start. Thanks for asking!

OK, so that was pretty cool to get a response. And he makes some good points. Maybe this whole socially networked book thing has some potential after all.

At the very least, it will be interesting to see how Amazon tries to improve the @author beta.

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