Hey everybody...

Have you ever personally read an ebook? Do you know anyone who has?

You can't stick an ebook in your handbag and read it on the bus, or in the bath (unless you have a laptop and you're willing to electrocute yourself or ruin your computer). They give you migraines. Computers get viruses. Batteries run out.

Compare that to a paperback - cheap, portable, you can get away with mistreating it a little, it won't freeze on you or lock in or catch a virus. It's safe to carry with you because it doesn't advertise its own financial value. Muggers tend not to steal books. And they don't give you headaches unless the print is very small.

scarletpeaches said:

You can't stick an ebook in your handbag and read it on the bus, or in the bath

Click to expand...

Yes, you can.

Beth

I'd say that unless you're book is erotic or romantic erotica, you shouldn't go the ebook route. I'm not aware of any other genres that have any sort of success rate.

There is a small but growing community of eBook readers out there and a number of publishers who specialize in them. Some of these publishers also do books in print form, usually using a POD model, but the bulk of their sales come from eBooks.

There are a number of nifty little devices on the market that can be used to read eBooks, most smaller than a paperback. They come with various options, including lighting settings, print size changability, etc. They are GREAT for reading at night in bed next to someone who is sleeping if you don't what to leave a light on. And they are very portable.

One of the largest segments of the eBook business is in the erotica line. One of the most successful publishers in this arena sports a stable of writers who make enough from their eBooks to support themselves quite nicely. But this is the exception rather than the rule and the majority of eBook publishers have limited resources for marketing and promotion, though they do what they can. Authors often must put a fair amount of time and effort into their own promotion if they want to sell a decent number of books. On the upside, the royalties paid to the authors are generally quite high percentage-wise, and there are even a few ePubs who pay advances, though that's the exception rather than the rule.

It's hard to know where this segment of the publishing industry might be a few years from now but given our society's love of the Internet and related gadgets, there's a good chance it will continue to grow. I have my doubts as to whether or not it will have any significant impact on the traditional print form of publishing anytime soon, but I do think it's here to stay.

Beth

Ah...if you're into them already...

But, honestly, I don't even know exactly what they are...I'd never buy something specifcally to read them...reading things on the computer longer than like a paragraph gives me headaches (rare for me), and I've got a good attention span...

I read some ebooks on my laptop but I prefer print. I just don't like reading texts on computer screen for extensively. I like to flip pages. I do like the convenience of carrying a few (or hundreds) of ebooks on the laptop which I carry with me anyway. I think for the computer-savvy generation, ebooks could become very popular. They're used to having everything they need for entertainment on a little handheld device (cell phone, games, videos, music, ebooks, PIM, Internet browser in an all-in-one device).

Seems to me, the day e-books become as popular as paperbacks, is the same day it becomes just as difficult to get published in e-book format as it currently is to get published in paperback.

I'm not so sure... the Internet has made publishing so much easier and cheaper to produce and distribute. Same could be said about ebooks -- with faster and cheaper production and distribution, it could create an environment for a publishing BOOM. Demand could be high (more and newer content every day), and more writers would be needed.


The paradym might be different, though. It'd probably becoming more interactive, customized, direct, and content-based. So instead of readers going to a book store to get what is new (push), it would become a publish-on-demand type of business model (pull). "Blogs" might give us a glimpse of what the future of publishing might look like. Who knows? The future is interesting.

I love ebooks, but only on my palm. No turning pages, backlit screen. It's actually much easier on the eyes than a laptop and lighter than the dead tree kind. Water is still an issue, but a paperback generally doesn't survive submersion either, you just out 8 bucks instead of 100 bucks.

However due to the limited selection I find myself reading more paperbacks that ebooks. Once you get a PDA, the ebook experience is completely different than with a laptop or desktop.

I have a few ebooks on my PDA, too. My brother has a much bigger PDA library than I do -- he prefers reading ebooks to paperbacks because they take up less room and he always has his PDA with him.

maestrowork said:

I'm not so sure... the Internet has made publishing so much easier and cheaper to produce and distribute. Same could be said about ebooks -- with faster and cheaper production and distribution, it could create an environment for a publishing BOOM. Demand could be high (more and newer content every day), and more writers would be needed.


The paradym might be different, though. It'd probably becoming more interactive, customized, direct, and content-based. So instead of readers going to a book store to get what is new (push), it would become a publish-on-demand type of business model (pull). "Blogs" might give us a glimpse of what the future of publishing might look like. Who knows? The future is interesting.

Click to expand...

It'll be interesting to see. I'm sure there will be a boom for some period of time, maybe a decade, but I assume that eventually the wet blanket will come down with an enormous plop and writers will be back to slush piles.

It's true that reading on a computer screen is not ideal, and it lacks the sensuality of handling a real book. But it's very convenient. An average laptop has the capacity to store many thousands of texts at a time, and there are some very good aids to reading.

One I like is a freebee called ybook from AW member, spacejock, available here http://spacejock.m6.net/Downloads.html.

It simulates a book on the screen, with side-by-side pages, textured background, selectable font size, adjustable borders etc, so you can tailor the appearance to suit. It even has variable page turn speed.

Combined with the thousands of (out of copywright) free etexts available from the likes of Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenberg.org and others, I'm working my way through the canonical literature and wisdom of the ages whenever I find myself with free time in front of my 'puter and am not in the mood for writing. It's great for plane trips, lunch breaks etc.

ebooks

Uh-oh. <bg>

Pardon me, please, whilst I drag my enormous soapbox out of the corner.



As recently as a year ago, I used to think ebooks were a fad, but receiving royalties not only changed my mind, but proved me wrong on several levels.

For many of the big ebook publishers, it is just as difficult to get read and contracted as it is with large print pubs. Although erotica may have been the flagship big seller, ebook variety is increasing by leaps and bounds. Just browse http://www.fictionwise.com. Can't speak to their specific sales numbers except to say that my two ebooks are doing well enough (and so beyond what I expected) in their initial month, that I'm already planning what to do with that first quarterly check!

Ease-of-reading-wise, not only are younger folks comfortable with using handheld devices, before my grandmother passed, she was thrilled to the heavens with her Palm reader, simply because it allowed her to read comfortably in bed using only one hand. By the time she finished preaching the gospel, there were at least a dozen people in her nursing home using one. Like computers, some people are comfortable with them and some people will *never* be comfortable with them...

(At least not for several decades, I'd guess.)

Anyhoo, will I get rich through ebooks alone? Not now, not today. But the possibility most definitely exists that I could a decade from now. And I was convinced of that not by ebook sales, but something an astute, barely 21, non-writer niece pointed out when I bemoaned the lack of a paper and ink book with my name on it.

She said, "It doesn't matter if it's on paper or in pixels. Readers are readers."

Which made me recall that in the mid-70's, I wrote a high school science paper on the virtually unheard of videotape technology. I still recall the astonished delight I felt at possessing the amazing ability to *record* old movies, instead of having to fight fatique to savor classics like "Rebel Without a Cause" in the middle of the night. Never you mind renting a prerecorded cassette -- that was so unbelieveable even Consumer Reports didn't address it a few years later in it's End of the Decade Technology Report.

So I came to believe my niece is absolutely correct. Technology is still changing everything and doesn't seem to be in any danger of slowing down. For me as a writer who writes for the love of telling a story first and money second, readers are still readers and how they read doesn't matter. The only important thing is whether or not they're willing to read what I write--and whether they go to the trouble of seeking out more when a new book comes along.

Okay, so this isn't two cents' worth of opinion, it's more like a buck 'n a half. Soapbox stowed away -- carry on....