The E-Books Are Coming, the E-Books Are Coming!
A few weeks ago, Amazon announced an interesting statistic: their e-book sales, which had earlier eclipsed their hardback sales, had now exceeded their paperback sales. E-books were officially Amazon’s best-selling format.
The response from a certain segment of the romance-writing community was immediate, although not exactly what you might expect. Amazon, they said, was lying. E-books couldn’t be more popular than print. They never would be. It was all marketing—Amazon just wanted to sell Kindles. E-books were just a passing fad and e-book readers were selfish swine who were destroying independent booksellers and probably responsible for the bankruptcy of Borders. Lalalalalala—I can’t heeeeear you!
Those of us who write e-books may not have found this response all that surprising. For years some segments of this community have tried to marginalize us or pretend we don’t exist. We were told our books weren’t “real” books. We were told that the “stigma” of electronic publishing would prevent us from ever being published by a print publisher. For a few years, we were even kept out of the Professional Authors Network of RWA because membership required a publisher’s advance of twelve hundred dollars, and most e-publishers give higher royalty payments instead of advances (the membership rules have since changed). One former president of RWA wrote editorials in the organization’s magazine that were so patronizing to e-book authors (and so dismissive of their work) that several e-book authors I know dropped their membership in protest.
RWA has become somewhat more ebook friendly since then. The current leadership is much less inclined to dismiss us and changes have been made to contest rules and rules for discussion and special interest groups to make it easier for us to participate. But the old attitudes still lurk around the edges, especially when the topic of e-book sales comes up.
Now let me go on record here as saying I believe Amazon is telling the truth: their e-book sales probably have exceeded their other sales. But I also believe that e-book sales in general are still not as great as print sales in general. I own a Kindle myself, but I read more hardbacks and paperbacks for the most part (courtesy of my trusty local library).
Still, I also believe the growth in e-book sales isn’t going to slack off for a simple reason: my younger son reads his newspapers and magazines on line. I don’t, you see. I have a newspaper subscription, also subscriptions to several magazines. I have no particular interest in reading them on my phone or on an iPad. But my son has no interest in reading them in paper. My son’s generation will eventually be the major book buyers, and my son’s generation has no problem with reading electronically. In fact, they seem to prefer it.
So will print disappear? Of course not. Will it become less common? I think so, but perhaps not soon. Will the romance-writing community learn to suck it up?
Lordy, let’s hope so. I’m really tired of these discussions about how e-books are either a flash in the pan or the end of Western civilization as we know it.
Posted in Blog • Tags: ebooks, On Reading, On Writing, romance writing | 3 Comments
Your post made me curious so I went over to amazon and checked my purchases. I bought my kindle on October 1, 2010. Since then, I have purchased 12 print books and 87 digital books. That’s not including any Samhain books because I buy them directly from the publisher so I can have them in multiple formats.
So yeah, I think digital is here to stay 😀
I totally believe Amazon’s claim, and the publishers have to also know it’s true by now (because of their revenues).
With as many Kindles, Nooks, and other e-readers as have been sold in the last couple of years (several million), how could these people ‘not’ be purchasing a lot of books? I have almost 975 ebooks on my Kindle 1 that I got for Christmas 2009 (I think that’s the year). Do the math on that many purchases (mostly from Amazon). I know I spend at least $200.00 per month on ebooks, when I spent less than $10.00 per month before (on paperbacks or hardcovers). I live in a small Texas town and we do not have a good library available.
Additionally, I am a series reader, so I purchase at least the first 2 in a series at the same time, then get the rest as I go.
I often re-read books, and I always have ALL of them with me. Where would I keep 1,000+ books in my house? I have them all on my iPhone app, my laptop, desktop, and my Kindle. My spouse reads on his iPhone, and his iPad.
I rarely watch TV anymore… I read instead. Waiting at the doctor’s office (or anywhere) is no problem… I always have a book available.
E-readers just make it so easy to read what you want, when you want to.
My 82 year old mother-in-law got an e-reader for Christmas this year because she had been purchasing large print books at a very high price, but the e-reader takes away that problem for her. She lives near a Barnes and Noble, so she goes to the store, finds books she wants, and the sales people download the books to her reader for her. It’s wonderful for her and she loves to read!!
Also, my 13 year old granddaughter got a Kindle for Christmas and she is thrilled. I will be buying Kindles for my other 2 grandchildren this coming Christmas, as I see they are also very good readers and will likely use them.
I don’t understand publishers at all. It’s cheaper to produce ebooks, they are environmentally friendly, they make for fast purchases, and the customers can keep their books as long as they want. I even have the covers available, and some are gorgeous.
The authors and publishers really need to ‘get with it’, because if their book isn’t available in ebook format, I will buy another book that is (this has happened to me). There are millions of Americans and others that will do the same.
The numbers tell the story. Just saying…
Ladies, I completely agree! I love the convenience of my Kindle and when I lived in a city without a good library system I used it a lot more than I do now (thank you, Jeffco!). I still vastly prefer it for traveling and I do most of my automatic buys on my Kindle.