Catch the Wave
There is something underway in the publishing world and it's big. Think of it as a coming wave, one that will lift and carry many while it crashes down on others. This coming, or should I say arriving, wave is not (unfortunately) good news for independent bookstores. For that matter, it's not good for the the national brand bookstores. It is, however, good for independent writers, at least in the short-term.
My goal? See if I can catch this wave – the e-book wave – with the hope that I can ride it while trying like hell to avoid what surfers call "going over the falls."
Steve Windwalker of the Blog Kindle Nation, recently wrote of how, as of this month, USA Today is including self-published direct-to-Kindle authors in its bestsellers list. The young author Amanda Hocking (who is expected to reach the million copies sold mark this spring) was the first independent writer to receive this distinction. Windwalker expects that other best seller lists, such as the New York Times, will follow USA Today's example. This is no small feat, no insignificant change.
Mystery writer Joe Konrath has been writing on the subject of e-books with ferocity over the past year. In one recent post Konrath describes how traditional hardcover book readers have faced the economic question of why they should purchase a $25 book from an unknown author. As a result, publishers were slow to take on new authors and when they did, distribution was limited. Yet now, with e-readers, all authors get broad distribution and Kindle provides a viable business model for new authors to price their books at $2.99 meaning that readers can still purchase their favorite authors while they trial work from new authors.
Back in 1982, just out of school, I started in the cable television business. ESPN was three years old and still filling time showing Australian Rules football, Ted Turner had launched the first cable news network two years prior, and MTV was a brand new service. Fifty-two channels of TV was high-tech. But back then, if you were in the industry, you could feel the change, one that felt like a wave that you wanted to ride. In 1993, I went to a two-day symposium at the Kennedy School where a hundred or so people, including software visionaries such as Mitch Kapor, talked about the commercialization of the Internet and how government and business might leverage this resource. Same sense. Fast forward a few more years to 1995, I remember sitting in a room with our top engineer, a member of congress, and a few others to demonstrate the capability of the yet-to-be-deployed cable modem. When the modem loaded up the web page there was a simultaneous, uncontrolled "Wow!" from a few of the people in the room. They were the ones who had been suffering through dial-up and they knew the power of what he had just seen. At the time, the doubters predicted that cable modems would penetrate maybe 5 or 10 percent of homes served. But in that room, listening to that reaction, you knew it was going to be something else, something much bigger.
I say none of this from the perspective of being able to pick winners or forecast the future. However, I have seen a few of these waves of change come, I've felt them below me, and I recognize that feeling again in the form of e-books.
My own book, A Single Deadly Truth, is just out of the gate. Next month I will run some Kindle sponsorships and hopefully push sales, and later this year I am following up with a second Steve Decatur mystery. I have no idea how these will sell over time. However, I've come to sense that same feeling that I had in 1982, in 1993, and in 1995. It's my hope I will ride this new wave. In any event, I know that I am once again witnessing a remarkable change. I'm glad to be part of it.
(Click on the below link for a video clip of big wave surfer Laird Hamilton)
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