A couple of articles on ebooks from Website Magazine

I thought I'd share these as we've been talking a lot about the emergence of ebooks from a niche to a big sector in the market.

http://www.websitemagazine.com/cont...book-sales-triple-overtake-print-formats.aspx

Trade publishing houses cite eBooks as generating fresh consumer interest in – and new revenue streams for – backlist titles,” the AAP (Association of American Publishers) reported. Backlist titles are books that have been in print for more than a year, and many publishers are reporting that eBook enthusiasts often buy an author’s full backlist after digitally consuming a new release.

This is uplifting news for authors, publishers and the book publishing industry as a whole, as well as for opportunistic online entrepreneurs.

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The article also cites a prior piece:
http://www.websitemagazine.com/cont...2011/02/05/e-books-becoming-big-business.aspx

Research firm Yankee Group estimates that the U.S. e-book market will reach $2.7 billion in sales in 2013, up from just $313 million in 2009. That's good for a growth rate of 83 percent, above even paid mobile apps, at 72 percent.

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Yankee Group has a very good track record in their predictions when it comes to the growth and adoption of new technology.

This is of interest to businesses as well as writers, because ebooks allow for a lot of opportunities for marketing. I particularly liked the suggestion about publishing white papers and collections of blog postings as Kindle Singles.

Expertise in any industry can be used to create an e-book in short order, then sell that material or use it as a promotional or cross-sell incentive. Amazon recently announced Kindle Singles - e-books in the range of 5,000-30,000 words. This could mean publishing white papers, how-to's or even re-packaging a series of blog posts around a particular topic as an e-book.

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rsullivan9597 said:

I totally agree with the two articles. One of the biggest advantages of ebooks is that they never go out of print. Usually when someone finds a new voice that they enjoyed a story from they can become frustrated looking for older titles that are out of print and they must scour used book markets.

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They definitely have that advantage, as long as the author/publisher keeps them available. And that can come in handy, especially with books that are published for a limited audience.

There is a really good history book that was written by a local historian a long time ago and originally vanity published (I think) by the local newspaper's press, but it has been out of print for decades. It is an excellent book of stories she collected going back to the founding of our town. We try to keep a couple on hand at the local historical society, but they are hard to find and expensive when we do find them.

The rights to the book were recently donated to us and we are going to publish it as an ebook as well as POD, so that those stories that are a piece of our history are not lost, and that future generations will have access to them, as well as visitors to our town who are interested in our history and researchers.

For us, the ability to publish this as an ebook is invaluable. IMO, the accesibility of this technology for locally-focused books is a boon for all of those local historians around the world whose work is really only of interest to locals, history-minded tourists, and people doing research.

Focus