THE READING REVOLUTION IS HERE….
And if I ever doubted it, I no longer do.
As some of you know, my real job is with a major retailer. For most of the holiday season, I worked in the electronics department. The number of iPads, iPods, KindleFires, Nooks and other tablet-like devices that were sold was astonishing. Amazon is already claiming sales of more than a million KindleFires.
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Cover via Amazon
And what can we do on each and every one of these electronic devices besides play games, email and surf the Net? WE CAN READ BOOKS!
Even though I wrote back in October about reading on an e-reader as opposed to having a printed book in your hands, I see the handwriting on the wall.
Image via CrunchBase
Mid-list authors like me have already found a home on the Internet with Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, which distributes e-books to e-retailers like Sony, Kobo, Diesel, Apple and others. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are paying nine times the royalty rates for e-books as the Big 6 in New York. I have a friend who has self-published 17 of her backlist books and has now sold more than a million e-books. She would never have seen the day in traditional publishing when she would be as well-paid as she is in e-publishing.
Amazon already has an apparatus in place where mid-listers can self-publish in print if they so desire. Mid-listers also now have access to editing, copyediting, cover design and even reviewing by a major reviewer. A writer who dreams of seeing his great American novel in print is no longer stymied and denigrated by the gatekeepers.
Of course, none of this is free. Authors will have an outlay of cash to make this happen. The author with business savvy will put together his or her own little organization that functions in a professional way, which will benefit both author and reader.
Image via Wikipedia
It's only a matter of time before one of the major bestselling authors will take a close look at his or her royalty statement and recognize how much money he or she is sacrificing by not being independent. And when that happens, I believe it will be like opening the floodgates. All bets are off when it comes to the future of New York print publishing and to existing online e-publishers. The ball is now in the court of authors and readers, where it should have been all along.
Like all change, on the surface, it seems as if this cataclysm has occurred overnight, but that isn't the case. It has been evolving for at least 2 years. What will now make the difference, though, is that so many people now own e-reading devices and will now be able to buy e-books cheaper than they ever could buy new print books. So each and every one of them can fill up his e-reader with as many as 3,000 books. Even school books will be e-books.
So if you didn't get an e-reader for Christmas, you might consider it. You can soon pay for the e-reader with what you'll save buying books.
This is an awesome development and I'm so glad it has happened in my lifetime.
I'd love to hear your comments.
Related articles
Karen Dionne: Millions of New e-Reader Owners "Fill 'Em Up!" (huffingtonpost.com)
Smashwords Authors Experience Blowout Christmas at Barnes & Noble (teleread.com)
