Tuesday, August 17, 2010

E-Book Revolution?




I wrote this for my own blog but thought I would share with Make Mine Mystery.

It's amazing to me that people want to call what is going on an e-book revolution.

E-books have been around for a long, long time. When I was first published as an e-author the only way to read my books was on a computer.

Next came the Rocket E-Reader--a wonderful device. It was back-lit, you could download books from e-publishers (there were and are lots of them), and it shut off if you didn't turn a page for a long while. Perfect for reading in bed. Unfortunately, the sold out to Sony, who didn't come out with a new e-reader for a long time, and in my opinion, wasn't nearly as good as the old Rocket.

Other readers came along in-between and after, but the first to really take off--as everyone knows--was Amazon's Kindle.

New York publishers took awhile, but they finally saw the hand-writing on the wall and included e-rights in their contracts and hung onto a much greater percentage for themselves then any of the e-publishers do with their authors.

Dorchester/Leisure Books recently announced they now will only print POD books (standing for Print on Demand which is just a printing process which allows the publisher to only publish what is needed) and electronic books. Some say they are going this route because of financial problems--authors are gossiping about the fact that royalties are not being paid on time. How much is true, I have no idea.

Things are definitely changing in the publishing world--but they have been for a long, long time. Good changes for the author, in that we can now send queries and whole manuscripts in as attachments and receive out contracts the same way. When I get royalties from my publishers it's spelled out exactly where the sale came from: print book from a book store, Amazon, or the publishers' website; e-book from Amazon or other e-book seller or the publishers' website.

And of course, many authors are submitting their work directly to Amazon.

Do I still read paper books? Yes. Do I have a Kindle? Yes. Do I miss the smell of a book when I'm reading my Kindle? No. As far as I'm concerned, a book is a book.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com/

5 comments:

Jean Henry Mead said...

I agree, Marilyn, and I like the fact that I can take over a hundred books with me in my Kindle wherever I go.

Kevin R. Tipple said...

All I know is when Skydark happens, your kindles, iPads and all the rest of it will be dead. Books, in hardback and paper, will survive.

Kevin
(Who is Terminator WITHOUT the great body and cybernetic implants)

Morgan Mandel said...

I must not be up on stuff. What is Skydark? Anyway, I look all kinds of books.

Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
http://facebook.com/morgan.mandel

Marilyn Meredith a.k.a. F. M. Meredith said...

I still read "regular" books too, but my Kindle is great for trips!

Marilyn

Mark W. Danielson said...

The bottom line is people are still reading. But since more women than men read, the focus on new published books seems to be geared toward women -- straight or otherwise. That makes it more competetive for men, but perhaps that isn't a bad thing.