Crazy For E-Books
By Scott Nicholson
One of the more surprising and nearly disturbing lessons of the Kindle Giveaway Blog Tour is that people don’t like it if they think you’re taking away their paper books.
And it’s cool that a lot of the comments on each stop are “I love my paper books, but I’d like to win a Kindle.” That’s what the tour is for, and it’s also for people to discover new book blogs and expand the Internet book community. It’s been a big success in that arena, and I am pleased all of us are meeting.
Winning freebies is a gimme. Opening up people to the idea of e-books is a lot more difficult. Some believe there will be several waves of adopters, and that the core audience, the people who will buy a couple of hundred e-book titles a year, have already made the switch and that the boom times are over. Some believe it’s all a fad that will be dead in a few years.
The second group is being lulled into e-books by more publicity about digital authors, a drop in prices for both content and devices, and a steady weighing of the advantages. This group, which most of you tour followers appear to be in, won’t give up paper books completely, at least for a while.
The conventional wisdom among “plugged-in industry observers” is the tipping point will come when e-reading devices are below $100, which some predict by Christmas. But those hip observers have been wrong about everything else, so I’m not buying in this time. After all, these are the same people who said Apple was going to take over the e-book market, when the iPad actually crowned the Kindle app as the undisputed heavyweight champ of the field.
Another discovery I’ve made is some people take it personally when I predict bookstores are going to die. As if I am the ones kicking book clerks to the curb and gleefully cackling and rubbing my hands while Dr. Seuss and Lemony Snicket burn in a big bonfire. Recent closings of Borders, Books-a-Million, and Barnes & Noble stores are touted as “exceptions,” but how many exceptions does it take to make a trend? It’s already happening, and I had absolutely nothing to do with it.
I don’t think it would make a bit of difference if we all engaged in a “Save the bookstores!” rally and ran down to our local stores with cash in hand. Books elicit emotions in a way that record and movie stores never could, perhaps because we link them to freedom and knowledge as much as we do information, and anything that threatens our democracy of ideas imparts core uneasiness. But e-books have a clear advantage in disseminating ideas, especially as prices drop and more libraries circulate them. Just as the printing press helped move written communication to the masses, e-books will take more words to more people, faster and cheaper.
“Wait,” you’re probably saying. “Who has $200 for a Kindle and who has $10 for a new e-book?”
Stick around and see. For one thing, the standard e-book price is artificially high for one reason only: the established infrastructure for paper book distribution wants it that way. See, corporations who own the infrastructure don’t want you to buy e-books. They want you to continue to buy paper books. And for all the noise about “value-added content,” the “hard work” the publishing company allegedly invests in the content, if you take away the ink and paper you are largely left with nothing but the author’s words.
So every time you go to a bookstore and buy a paper book, you are reinforcing that higher price. If a printed book is worth it to you, I fully support your purchase. I wish I had thousands of dollars to buy books each year. I’ve always spent more on books than I can justify, and it’s really about the only emotional, impulse buy in which I indulge. I’ve never regretted it.
But I am not paying $15 for a $3 e-book, knowing the extra $12 goes to support people who aren’t doing much more than dipping a bucket as the electronic money stream flows by on the way to the creator.
As an author, I love e-books because for the first time in my career, I can make all my books available at the same time, worldwide, around the clock. I get all the net proceeds from my work, and there is no limit on the amount of writing I can do. I don’t have to worry about slots, marketing categories, book lengths, or all the other artificial considerations that have homogenized major publishing. I don’t have to worry about competition, because my business-the Scott Nicholson business—is unlike any other. All I have to do is make my message clear and meet my reader as fairly as possible for both of us.
And before you go loading up your keyboard to shoot virtual silver bullets at me, I am doing the same thing in
paper! Yes, all my books will be available as print-on-demand. Speed Dating with the Dead just came online, and all three of my new releases this year are out in trade paperback. My graphic novel collection DIRT just went online, and Forever Never Ends is in the final proof stage. And the irony is that I sell them morecheaply on my Web site than anyone else can, bookstores included.
But I don’t blame you if you avoid the paper version and go for the cheap e-book versions, because I support choice, and that’s what the digital era is all about. Drive to the bookstore if you like, because the experience of browsing rows and rows of books has value. Life isn’t a zero-sum game where the money you save is the final score of your mortal experience.
But I believe this electronic thing is going to catch on and launch a new Golden Age of Reading. If you are still hesitant, why not try out the Kindle for PC absolutely free? And load up some free e-books while you’re there. It doesn’t give you the entire experience, because you lose the convenience and portability of a handheld device, but you can get an idea of how it works, so that when you win your Kindle DX here on the tour, on the Kindle 3 through my newsletter, you’ll be ready for the next step—an entire universe at your fingertips.
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Scott Nicholson is author of 12 novels, including the paranormal thrillers Speed Dating with the Dead, The Red Church, and Creative Spirit. He’s also written four comic series, six screenplays, and more than 60 short stories. His web site is www.hauntedcomputer.com.
CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED ON THIS BLOG!!! CHECK OUT THE REST OF SCOTT’S TOUR FOR MORE CHANCES TO WIN!
To enter to win the Kindle DX, simply leave a post comment with contact email. Scott will return in seven days (Sept. 29) and collect the names and assign numbers. At the end of the tour, one number will be randomly selected by the staff of the Watauga County (NC) Public Library.
You can also enter to win a Kindle 3 by subscribing to the tour newsletter at scottsinnercircle-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
A Pandora’s Box of e-books will be randomly given away through Scott’s Twitter (follow “hauntedcomputer”).
No purchase necessary and the contest is international.
If you are reading this anywhere other than a feed reader, then this is not original content and was taken without permission from Crazy-for-Books.
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I always believe that people have their own choices and preference. There are a lot of eReader owners that still buy printed book making me one of them. I both love my eReader and ebooks the same way I love my printed books.
greyz(dot)greyz@gmail(dot)com
This > "I don’t have to worry about slots, marketing categories, book lengths, or all the other artificial considerations that have homogenized major publishing."Authors are free again. Not just because they can bypass traditional publishing and go the eBook route, but because they have a choice of which route to follow. Choice is important.I saw a RT on twitter that said something like, "Writing is art. But publishing is a business." I'd like to add that readers generally don't care whether a work is artful or conceived of a business mind. They just want great books no matter the genre or word length and over time it won't matter whether it's an eBook or paper book. They'll all just be books and we all, individually and collectively, choose the format that best suits us. The important thing now is we all have a choice. Choice is better for us all. We need both paper books and eBooks. One shouldn't be the death of the other unless one is simply more fit to survive for whatever reason.michaellmartinjr[at]gmail[dot]com
This > "I don’t have to worry about slots, marketing categories, book lengths, or all the other artificial considerations that have homogenized major publishing."
Authors are free again. Not just because they can bypass traditional publishing and go the eBook route, but because they have a choice of which route to follow. Choice is important.
I saw a RT on twitter that said something like, "Writing is art. But publishing is a business." I'd like to add that readers generally don't care whether a work is artful or conceived of a business mind. They just want great books no matter the genre or word length and over time it won't matter whether it's an eBook or paper book. They'll all just be books and we all, individually and collectively, choose the format that best suits us. The important thing now is we all have a choice. Choice is better for us all. We need both paper books and eBooks. One shouldn't be the death of the other unless one is simply more fit to survive for whatever reason.
michaellmartinjr[at]gmail[dot]com