Over the years, Steve wrote hundreds of mostly terse, often funny, irritable or persnickety emails to Apple customers who wrote him at steve@apple.com. Now a whole book of them is being published.
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The book is called Letters to Steve: Inside The E-Mail Inbox of Apple’s Steve Jobs and it is exclusively available as a Kindle e-book. It costs $2.99.
Here’s the official description:
This book is based on interviews with many of the customers and fans Jobs communicated with. These tales reveal the intricacies of how Jobs portrayed himself as likable and accessible through direct interaction with fans. He handled customer-service inquiries himself and carefully revealed hints about upcoming Apple products, guaranteeing headlines on blogs. However, some of these letters, when analyzed, provide a glimpse into his “reality distortion field,” in which he lobs insults, bends the truth and uses misdirection in order to manipulate anyone on the receiving end.
The initial Amazon reviews aren’t exactly positive, and I’m not entirely sure about this concept myself. Steve’s emails were often as short as a sentence, maybe even a few words. I’m not sure how much insight into the “reality distortion field” a book like this could even provide. Then there’s the whole question of what Steve would have thought of it, and the answer there is he thought people republishing his emails was rude. This wouldn’t exactly have gotten his stamp of approval.
