I have a confession to make.
I don’t read ebooks.
Oh, sure, I read PDF’s of stories and skim free books on my computer from time-to-time, but for the most part, “reading” books that way, to me, is something to be reserved for candy books. You know, fluff. And I don’t buy a lot of fluff these days. That has more to do with money and time management than anything else. I used to have a lot more books. But the more books I have, the fewer I read. They become overwhelming. It’s a vicious cycle.
But back to the PSA.
I realize that an increasing number of folks prefer their books in ebook format these days. I got numerous angry emails from folks prior to the release of the digital version of God’s War telling me that I was losing all the money they wanted to give me (royalties on ebooks are actually pretty good with my publisher) because there wasn’t yet a digital version out. After it became available, I got more angry emails from folks telling me about every formatting error, which they were surprised “weren’t caught by your copyeditor.”
That comment alone said a lot about how behind everybody is when it comes to thinking about and creating ebooks. My copyeditor does not, I believe, know HTML. And even if he did, checking HTML for my publisher’s ebooks does not appear to be one of his moonlighting jobs. But whose job, exactly, IS it at a publishing house to check ebook formatting? Is this a job title as yet? How many people actually have it? (more…)
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This is certainly an interesting time to be a writer. Lots of change going on, yes? For the consumer, we have the e-book revolution. E-books are certainly here to stay. The only question that remains is where the equilibrium point will be once things settle out and how much that changes over time. I suspect that things will fall out somewhere around the 50/50 mark. 50% e-books and 50% print. When? My best guess is in the next two to three years. There’s a certain number of people that like print books and will continue to by them, essentially forever, and now that e-readers are moving into the mainstream, it won’t be long before everyone who wants one will have one.
I’ve sensed a great deal of hysteria regarding the emerging eBook industry. Declarations about the death of print and the traditional publishing industry abound. I’ve always been a it of a contrarian. It’s really hard to make good decisions while terrified. So it is that when people use fear to influence me I immediately stop, dig in my heels and ask questions. So, the following is sort of a disorganized ramble. You’ll have to forgive me. It’s how my brain works. Hopefully, you won’t have to pull too much of a Jackie Chan to follow my train of thought.
I’ll say it up front: I LOVE ebooks. Especially for travel. I don’t miss the days of yore one bit, when I’d have to carry my bodyweight in paperbacks to have enough reading material for the 15-hour flight to my husband’s home country of Australia. And how well I remember the agony of choosing a single book to take on multi-week backpack trips in the Sierra – to keep my pack weight manageable, I couldn’t bring more than one. But now? Now, I load up my trusty e-reader with as many books as I like, without adding a single gram of weight. Technology for the win!
