E-books Here to Stay...Today's Gutenberg - Part II

Last week, I touched on E-Books as Today's Gutenberg. There have been different methods over the years of passing information. It started out by word of mouth with our ancestors, moved to hand done with the discovery of paper. In the Medieval times, our publishers were monks who painstakingly copied books. They were worth a fortune and people showed their wealth in having books. Then came the printing press. Books became cheaper and more widely available. Today, we come to the printing press being the only accepted method by some. Where would we be if the monks decided to ban the new style printing press and preached about the lack of professionalism of the new method?

Now, there are many reasons that this new E-book is more convenient and adaptable to the modern lifestyle. First, there is not as much paper being used. This also leads to some other benefits. We can have whole libraries available to us at the touch of a screen. In the tiny homes, on the move lifestyle, we can just carry the one e-reader with us and read at our leisure.

It is more available as a method to get books to read as well as to get books published. However, the EPUB is not always the easiest to use in it's current form. Authors who do their own EPUB tend to have to work diligently to get them to work well. This may reduce the number of people who self-publish for this reason. However, there is a workaround if you get other companies to do the EPUB transformation for you, but there are risks and benefits to that. We shall see over time if this improves and becomes easier. I would suggest it should with the current printing presses having come a long way from the old typeset.

There is also a reduction of the need to have many many copies of your book printed. You don't have to go to the vanity press and have a box load cluttering up your garage. If you sell, there are always copies available. If you don't sell, the only evidence you have of it is not as discouraging. You have a neat list of your books which are available. They show up on a nice page. This is far less discouraging than seeing boxes of unsold books. It is more economically friendly to the author and publisher.

So, I toast the new E-book as the wave of the future. Though physical books might always be a primer and a significant partner to the E-book, the E-book is here to stay and can be a benefit to both the reader and the author. It can reduce the amount of paper in the landfills. If we let it and don't misuse and mistreat it, the e-book could be the the beginning of an awakening of great things. Currently, it is a large market. We can work together with publishing companies or we can fight each other. I guess the choice is up to each individual. I chose to self-publish because I believe in the format and the modern conveniences it has to offer everyone.

So, be Realistically Unrealistic. See the potential and be the potential! How to Publish an E-book on a Budget of $0: Making your Dreams a Reality