Steve Jobs, Cottage Industry

Someone has undoubtedly secured the comic book rights. There's the Broadway play. Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein have enjoyed similarly exceptional levels of attention, but how many people have memorialized them with tattoos? JL 

Laura Holson reports in the New York Times:

This year alone, about a dozen books will be published about him, and two movies will be released. Surely a Netflix series can’t be far behind.

Three weeks after the mercurial Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died, in October 2011, Walter Isaacson published an authorized biography that many then considered to be the definitive account of the billionaire’s life.

Mr. Isaacson, the former managing editor at Time, had interviewed Mr. Jobs more than 40 times over two years and talked to 100 friends and colleagues for the book “Steve Jobs.” Four years later, though, the fascination with Mr. Jobs persists.

This year alone, about a dozen books will be published about him, and two movies will be released: Alex Gibney’s critical documentary, “Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine,” which premiered at the South by Southwest festival in March, and Danny Boyle’s “Steve Jobs,” starring Michael Fassbender, which will be released in October. (Not to be confused with the 2013 film “Jobs,” which starred the younger-Jobs look-alike Ashton Kutcher.)

The movies come in the same year as the recently released biography “Becoming Steve Jobs,” written by Rick Tetzeli and Brent Schlender, former Fortune staff members and the only book to be endorsed by Apple executives so far.

This year’s crop of books and movies feeds the insatiable appetite of Apple fans that has spurred a cottage industry in all things Steve Jobs.

“There are dozens of books about Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein,” said Mr. Isaacson, who is the chief executive of the Aspen Institute and has written biographies of Einstein and the diplomat Henry A. Kissinger. “Steve is to our time what those amazing characters were to theirs.”

The latest books focus variously on Mr. Jobs’s leadership (“Steve Jobs: Visionary of the Digital Revolution,” by Christine Honders, being published in August); his values (the newly released “Steve Jobs and Philosophy,” edited by Shawn E. Klein); and his image (“Steve Jobs: Insanely Great,” by Jessie Hartland, set for July).

More are being released only on (oh, the irony) Amazon’s Kindle. Yet another print book, “Do What You Love: And Other Lies About Success and Happiness” by Miya Tokumitsu, scheduled for August, examines how the follow-your-dream philosophy promoted by Mr. Jobs and others like Oprah Winfrey is at odds with modern capitalism.

Both Mr. Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” and “Becoming Steve Jobs,” by Mr. Tetzeli and Mr. Schlender, explore the technology executive’s temperament and business acumen.

But Mr. Isaacson’s book has been criticized by some Apple executives who say it is an unflattering portrait of their boss. And so they have participated in, and subsequently lauded, the overall more sympathetic “Becoming Steve Jobs.” Mr. Schlender was one of a handful of journalists to have a close relationship with Mr. Jobs for two decades and, among other things, talks about their relationship in his book.

David Kirkpatrick, an author who has written extensively about technology and is the chief executive of Techonomy, which holds conferences on technology-related issues, said that more books are likely in the coming years as people seek to imitate Mr. Jobs’s impact on many industries: music, publishing, computers and telephones.

“They are all intended for people who want to go into business and be the next Steve Jobs, which is silly,” he said. “How do you capture the essence of someone perceived to be a miracle worker?”

Mr. Jobs’s story, Mr. Kirkpatrick suggested, transcended worldly concerns: “He did not get famous just because he was about business success. He was about beauty and design.”

Surely a Netflix series can’t be far behind.