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/

An Unusual Development

I've been writing mysteries for years. However, my first published books were two historical family sagas. From there I started writing mysteries, but I also wrote some other genres and one romance with supernatural elements called Lingering Spirit.

That book was one of my first e-books published by a house I broke ties with a few years back.

Through the years, I've had some interesting experiences with publishers: two died, one never paid any royalties even though I knew books had sold, one I really liked decided to quit the publishing business, and early on, I had dealings with a couple of crooks--one skipped the country, the other landed in jail.

Oak Tree Press is now the publisher of my Rocky Bluff P.D. series, An Axe to Grind being the latest. The publisher put the two books on Kindle and asked if I had any other books that she could put on Kindle. Of course there were the previous books in that series and I had this romance, Lingering Spirits.

I sent it to her and she fell in love with the book and put it on Kindle. It's had moderate sales. Every time I ran into her at a conference, she told me, "I just love Lingering Spirits."

Now, she's decided to put it out as a regular book. That's kind of backwards from how it usually works--the book out first then the e-book (except for E-publishers who usually do both at the same time).

I just received the page proofs and went over them. The first few pages made me cry as I read them. Hopefully they'll affect other readers the same way.

Now my problem is, how do I promote this book? I'm so used to promoting mysteries, this is kind of a challenge.

Oh, I'll sell it right along with my mysteries when I do in-person events, but except for Facebook and Twitter, not sure how to approach the on-line promotion.

As I titled this blog, it is an unusual development.

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com

E-Readers by Christine Duncan

My daughter came to visit last week. Before she visited, she made sure to tell me that she had downloaded my book, Safe House to her iPhone. She liked the idea of having a book in her pocket, in case she got stuck somewhere boring. I was interested to hear that it was that aspect of e-books that she liked.
I like that too. But I also like the ability to bump up the font to make it easier to read. I don't know why someone doesn't market an e-reader specifically to those of us who are freakin' blind. The fact that e-books are usually cheaper doesn't hurt either.
I don't believe that the iPhone is the e-reader all of us have been waiting for. It's too expensive. Unfortunately, I don't think it's the new iPad either. But these things get people thinking. They start the process.
But as I told someone the other day, I'll know the e-reader has finally arrived when I can borrow one from the library, already loaded with the book to read, just as I can now with the Playaway audio players. Until then, I'll download to my little iPaq and dream.

E-book breakthrough?

There is e-book news from several fronts this week. First, the Texas legislature has passed a bill that allows school districts to use their textbook money for e-readers. Second, news leaks tell that Amazon will unveil a new, larger size Kindle for reading newspapers and textbooks. The unveiling is set for tomorrow (as I write this) or today (as you read this.).

The textbook news out of Texas should cheer all e-book lovers. Texas is the second largest purchaser of textbooks. Now, school kids in Texas may get their books electronically. The savings will be felt by the districts who won't have to store textbooks, who will be able to replace them easier and cheaper when they wear out or become outdated. Children will feel the weight of all those books removed from their bookbags. I have always believed the spear point of the e-book revolution is in textbooks. The generation that goes to school on e-books will be the e-book market of the future.

The Kindle news is also exciting in this regard. The large format of the new Kindle is intended for textbooks, which are printed in a larger format than trade books. The larger screen will allow for presentation of graphs and other illustrations. It's also rumored to have the ability to make annotations to the text—to write in the margins, in other words. The large format will make reading newspapers easier, too.

Is this the breakthrough e-book authors have been waiting for? Perhaps. It's certainly a significant step. However, I believe the biggest breakthroughs are yet to come and they are not in technology or legislation, but in marketing. The breakthrough will be in the selling of e-books, or more specifically, getting the book in front of a potential buyer's face.

The genius of the Kindle, in my opinion, is not in the electronic ink or other razzle-dazzle, nor in the ability to carry your entire library in your hand. No the genius of the Kindle is that you carry an entire bookstore in your hand. With a Kindle, you can buy a book whenever the mood strikes. Say you've just finished a Michael Connelly. You can immediately purchase the next one and within minutes plunge ahead into the series. No having to head to a bookstore, or start up your computer. A flip of the switch and you're connected. Another book purchased. Genius.

The shortcoming of the Kindle is that it connects to the Amazon store, which is not an inviting store. I like bookstores and drugstore racks and airport displays and newsstands as a means of selling books. A bookstore with shelf after shelf and tables piled with books and end displays with the covers facing out is a pleasure palace, full of temptations. The Amazon store, on the other hand, is like a bookstore with sheets over the shelves and tables. You can see what's inside only if you peek behind the sheets. Even then, you only see a small part of the stock. That's what the Amazon search engine feels like to me.

You sell a book by putting the cover in the reader's face. That's what a bookstore does. That's what a book signing does. Until publishers, booksellers and writers can figure out how to put the book cover in front of a reader's face, instead of at the end of a search function, we won't have a breakthrough in e-books.

What do you think?

Mark Troy
http://hawaiian-eye.blogspot.com
http://www.marktroy.net

Would YOU read an E-book Because of Oprah?

I love e-books for all the usual reasons: they are cheap, I can put them on my PDA and bump up the font so I can read in bed without my contacts, I can get them at any time day or night whether or not the library or the bookstore is open, and oh yes, they are cheap. Did I mention cheap?
I've been reading e-books for years and it was a big priority to me that my own mysteries come out in electronic format as well as paper. I really believe it is an option whose time has come.
Notice I said option. E-books are no reason for me to stop listening to audio books on my MP3 player as I run in the mornings (Why else get up at 5:45 in the cold and DARK, if not because I can't wait to hear what is going to happen next in that Mariah Stewart book?) E-books are no reason for me to stop getting paper books at the bookstore or at the library to read on the loveseat at night. But I do love having an e-book on that backlit PDA waiting for me to climb into bed at night. I have hard contacts which are only suppposed to be in for 11 or 12 hours a day. (Yes, Dr. Brooks, I do listen! I seriously do NOT sleep in the darn things.) And I can't read with glasses--they just don't correct my vision enough. So that is some serious reading time I'm missing without that e-book.
Not to mention the fact that the backlight on the PDA makes it possible for me to read far into the night without disturbing my husband. So I've been an e-book fan for years. I even bought my husband a Sony e-reader for his birthday and converted him. But now Oprah is jumping on the bandwagon. She is recommending the Kindle. And I'm wondering--would you read an e-book because she does?
Frankly, it always surprises me that many people have a PDA stashed somewhere and haven't gotten the free software at Mobipocket that they can use to give e-books a try. No need to get a new and expensive gadget. Are you curious? Did Oprah make you wonder? Am I the only one who loves to read in bed at night?