Read a Good Book Lately? : Has anyone have an opinion about the future of ebooks? by Theresa M. Moore

I don't have statistical information but an opinion. It is very unpleasant for me reading a book on a bright and glowing computer screen. I would rather have a solid, easy on the eyes, book that I can flip through, toss, cram in my back pack and enjoy. I checked a couple of years ago and ebooks had 2% market share, not good, Its probably higher now, but, I don't believe ebooks will overtake hard books.

I'm curious how well a concept like Booktrack will take off. They're essentially ebooks with a soundtrack synchronized to your reading (based on a set speed). You can double click to any point in the book and the track resyncs to that position ... adjust music and sound effect levels, etc. As a composer, I'm thinking this might also be an outlet for my film scoring skills: www.booktrack.com

Book track, looks interesting.

Currently, estimates from indie publishing are suggesting that e-reading (including magazines and newspapers, as well as traditional books and self published books) make up as much as 23-25% of the market share. The problem is that none of these quoted figures can tell you where they are getting this estimate. Amazon does not release sales figures, traditional publishers will only claim the figures for the traditional books on e-reader (which sell for WAY more than a lot of e-books, etc. so are not always the popular choice) and the boutique publishers I have looked at would not give me an estimate of their sales either. I suspect their figure is probably based on the huge number of books available, and some estimations based on the number of e-readers/ smart phones sold. Either which way you look at it, e-readers alone sell a lot. People must be reading on them! I think the problem is not how much of the market share e-readers take up, but how much product takes up that small part of the market share. It is hard to get noticed in the publishing world nowadays, especially for a self-pubber who doesn't have a team of people helping them make their book a success. What are you doing to market your book?

While you folks were commenting I took the plunge and have been designing new covers for my printed books, reducing the number of pages via some judicious margin tweaking, and in other ways reducing the list price of the books somewhat. I am hoping that sales of print will pick up. I usually market my book by means of classified ad sites, participating in book discussions, and I tried print ads for a while but that is a drain on my pocketbook with little to show for it. I had also produced some book trailers but thanks to Google's refusal to add book trailers to their own category, my videos have been buried under cute kittens and other animals, live shot disaster fottage and other stuff. I would not expect them to go viral by any stretch but they are not getting views. That is the bottom line. If you are reading about the DOJ's pursuit of the big 6, it looks dire for them but I'm not concerned about that. I am concerned that no matter what I do consumers rely so much on big retailers that they are ignoring the rest of the internet. I continue to truck on, however. Since I am only one person, there are only 24 hours in my day and I must find sleep somewhere in there. Now I have read that malls are beginning to restrict cell phone use thanks the the Amazon app allowing customers to scan a barcode and then buy the item from Amazon. But there has been a backlash for that. Big online retailers who track phones for sales are mostly to blame for a reduction in revenues to stores. All I can do is stand by and watch.

Heidi, thank you for your well researched and thoughtful post.

Thanks Ang, I've been weighing this info for awhile! Theresa, I give some tips on my blog for marketing your book http://anangellslife.blogspot.com/ It is tough! There are more writers than ever before, vying for fewer readers than ever before in a source that has soooo much promotion in so many different markets! Hope the suggestions I've acquired help. I totally feel the needing to sleep comment!

Make friends with book bloggers and ask for book reviews ...and might I suggest lateralaction.com? There is a free coaching series there that will help you. It is brilliant, honestly. Are you using social media for promotion? You should be. Hang in there.

I use my Nook, Google Books and Kindle apps on my tablet daily. I read an average of 2-3 books per week. ALL of my friends are addicted to their Kindles. Just FWIW, ebooks are here to stay. What it means is that the publishing industry is going through the same thing the music industry went through with the advent of iTunes. It means indie authors have a voice, but it also means that the days of the blockbuster are...not over but different. If you have read the Long Tail, you know what is going on and how to leverage it. For an indie author who is self-publishing, the smartest thing you can do is put yourself on as many channels as possible and BLOG. Use social media consistently. And you're going to have to be creative in your approach to advertising and promotion. Check out a guy named David Meerman Scott...he has tons of free resources. If after reading some of what he has to say, you don't have some ideas that will kickstart you, I will eat my hat. It's a big hat.

And another FWIW, I'm cutting and editing video for an author today for their personalized YouTube channel. And after that I'm doing custom Kindle book layout, with custom illustrations we hand drew. The Lulu version of the book has been out for a month and her audience is dying for the ebook. I'm not a hack spouting off, I do this daily. Good luck. (forever-families.com features the Lulu author I am referring to...we set up a community for her on Facebook and it had 400 members within two weeks)

Anne, thanks for those great resources! I'm looking forward to looking into them more!

In some places (the major publishers) but a lot of indie authors are still keeping theirs low. I personally think that it would be foolish not to publish in any and all formats possible. My next book ( which will hopefully come out end of summer) I plan on having e-book, physical book, audiobook and possibly a podcast. It is a lot of work, but hopefully it will be worth all of the effort!

Would anyone like to do a book review on Gideon's Loop? I sure would appreciate it very much.

Terry, I wouldn't mind, but it will take about six weeks. If that is okay, feel free to send me a PDF to hangell531@gmail.com

The simplicity and smaller expense of buying books for an e-reader like the Kindles and Nooks, coupled with the ease in publishing with Amazon, means there will be less and less market share for printed books. This may be bad news for mainstream publishers, but there is an upside for writers. When I’m finished editing a book to the point I’d be comfortable sending it into a publisher, I use the free software to put it in mobi form for my Kindle. I can then go over the novel one more time reading it like anyone would that bought it at Amazon. If I find anything when I go over it, I can highlight and bookmark any mistakes I find for later editing. It’s an incredible tool for finalizing a manuscript for either publishing or submitting.

Hi. I gather that BookBaby does decent distribution. I just had my novel, The Anarchist's Gilfriend, serialized by an online publisher and conducted a social media campaign for quite a few months. Truth is that while ebooks are selling more than other formats, they are hard to sell without a physical book. With no tangible book, you can't get it reviewed. If you are writing genre fiction, vampire, mysteries, romance, you may be able to get a review or a blog tour. Otherwise, very difficult. If you have a physical book, you can ask blog reviewers to look at it. And you need to do this 3 months ahead of your pub date. Or they can't really give advance reviews, which is the point for many. So you need to plan a campaign and get some physical books. Amazon is not as good as handselling. For anotehr title I wrote, Mermaid stories, an all in the family kind of book. I sold it at Books of wonder and at any bookstore in beach towns. More sales than amazon and got more. Handselling can be effective to create word of mouth that leads to ebook sales. Also, Facebook Ads are decent to draw traffic, if you have a category. But my advice is find a publisher, even if you use their name and finance.

@Terry Persinger: I would appreciated it if the comments are kept on topic. Asking for a book review through another person's topic is a no-no.

@Kari: I agree about the switch back to print. Once many device owners discover that the software they are using is both proprietary and restricted with regard to access to content, they abandon the reader in favor of the good old-fashioned paper tome. For example, I stopped listing my ebooks on Amazon because of its bad selling practices and now only list the printed versions because it does not make sense to ignore it altogether. But many authors I know are crying about how low they have to set prices before they can get a sale, which is not really a sale. It is a leasing fee to read the book on a Kindle, and one cannot import ebooks from other sources into it. @Susan - predicting when a book will be published is like playing the lottery. So I don't set a pub date per se. I set a month, but these book reviewers are used to a traditional publisher's method, which is to publish the book and then set a release date months down the road. The books are there, sitting and waiting until the day they are shipped. It is that ship date those reviewers are waiting for. Since I don't issue an ebook until the printed book is available for sale, advance reviews can be problematic. Heck, getting any reviews can been problematic since a lot of the "legit" reviewers will not review self-published books under any circumstances. This does not stop me from forging on, however. I don't hold with the idea that just because a trad publisher did not pick you up does not mean you are published. The evidence is in your hand. You either are or you are not. Who does it is irrelevent.

I work as a book publicist and actually do review books on my blog, some even classics. I AM NOT ASKING FOR A REVIEW. I am saying that it is very hard to market an e-book WITHOUT A REVIEW. You aren't taken seriously by mainstream media and aren't building a reputation. So I would hope this would be useful? That the process of publishing e-books is easy, selling is difficult because it's set up that you have a physical book to market first, then create a market for the e-book with the reviews and interviews. So the reason it's hard to market e-books is that the process means few mainstream places will take it seriously without a publishers auspices. And it's hard to sell it. Look at GOODREADS, they won't look at self-published books. I want to change the reality. I am just pointing it out. Sorry I wasn't clear or you misinterpreted. I am a 20 year publishing veteran AND a writer.

They Get reviews first before publishing--Why they are waiting?

I'm a young author, so I've only been involved in this new age of publishing. While I do prefer the traditional ways of having a book in your hands, it has died down considerably. I've spoken with many people on the subject and it seems to me that with all the new websites out there offering to publish books for free, it makes it so anyone can publish a book, and since these companies only publish ebooks there are simply so many out there. I do think the paperback is coming back though, at least in my generation, because all those wonderful classic books are so popular right now, and those my age want it in their hands, not on a screen.

So sorry for the slip up, I'm new at this and I don't know all the rules.

William, you are so on the mark. I know 8 year olds who've had kindles since 5 and really prefer paper. I think like the evolution of man, several forms of publishing will coexist for a while. But the e-book popularity, it's just ahead of hardcover sales--interestingly that is holding better than paperbacks from what I've seen. But the model of selling, where e-books are an adjunct to a paper sale, will have to change. And ebooks are doing well, when topic is a major interest, person is famous, or a specific niche or genre. I have been surprised how well science fiction, fantasy and YA have adopted e-world marketing tools, like blog tours. But the old model and it's instiutions and gatekeepers are still in control. Why it takes some creativity to publicize/market a book. Social media platforms can be useful, if done consistently.

Susan, it is, and by a lot. Personally, I seem to sell a lot more hardcover than paperback, and obviously more ebook than anything else, the industry is such a strange one. You know, I'm extremely surprised with that as well. Those genres seem to be leading the packs considerably, most of the authors that are doing well with their ebooks are in those genres. They definitely are, and I think that is what makes this industry so particular. Fewer and fewer authors are getting picked up traditionally because of the rise in ebooks, but it also makes the desire to get picked up greater. So, many more people are publishing with the intent on going traditional, but they embrace the indie author side and makes it one community with the solid goal of hitting that dream. The last part of your comment is spot on, that is the essence of the new era.

Social media can drive people to a site, but then, how many want to read on screens? And at what price. That to me is the most problemmatic part of the ebook inundation. People take a chance on them if they're cheap, yet being accustomed to that means writers get paid even less and that will be a new norm. I know musicians who can't make money off CD's any more, though they're popular. They try to make it touring and keep a day job. Hate to see the publishing industry go that way. I would like to see Amazon out of the biz, since they will go to lowest common denominator--while half of hardcover makes some sense?

Hi Susan, I ebook and I'm published. I promote on twitter, blog and am writing a Hybrid book online that generates a lot of traffic and makes people interested in the series. Over 400 hits a day and that's steady. I also blog for other sites about my writing. It all helps to spread the word. Stimbleupon is one button you need on your site. Your blogs, etc, get bounced around the world as well as all the other social media buttons below your blogs. Hope this helps...

Well, this discussion has been lively while I was gone. I did not mean to leave you all in the lurch but as I said before I'm in a time crunch. If I stepped on anyone's toes I'm sorry, but I am a veteran of flame wars and did not want to start another. Just at the moment, there is little anything can be done to advance sales of ebooks without the customers expressing an interest. And from what I read recently, apparently ebooks may be here to stay but about 75% of readers have said they are not going to buy a device anytime soon. While you were ruminating I have been working on relaunching my book site; it had been down due to server problems. The technical aspects of getting a site to work is nothing compared to the problems all sorts of people have been having just getting their site noticed. Everytime a search engine host changes an algorithm, people whose site may be absolutely perfect have been tossed off. That can interfere with attracting customers and selling books! Oh, well, soldier on.

The bottom line is that the publishing industry has two structures in place and they haven't yet merged. Publishers have lost many of the review pages used to market books and making use of tangible online outlets. The gatekeepers remain and the democratic Indie book world is a separate structure which gains admittance by persevering through indifference to build an audience and make their own commercial entity. Romance, YA, Sci-fi, mystery are served well by blog tours and blog reviews, nongenre books have little access to alternative reviewers. How-to people have lectures and workshops that send buyers to their sites. My work is crossing over between the two worlds. You need mainstream reviews, radio and TV attention. Only way to access Good Reads, which won't deal with Indie bks, like most reviewers. As a recent Indie novelist, worse yet, with a book serialized, I am very cognisant of the marketing issues. It's transition time but I believe unlike the music industry, where songwriters now receive nothing for their work and can't sell CD's, writers must fight not to have their products cheapened. Give aways aren't a marketing plan. It's desperation.

@Paul - Thanks so much for the link to www.booktrack.com. I started a book project (Sarah's Last Words: A Memoir) a couple of years ago and contacted the top digital publishers about including a soundtrack in my book. I was told it was too expensive, and the technology solutions they could provide was short of my needs. So it's been on the back burner, and meantime has become planned as a transmedia (book, short film and documentary) project. The question is whether including a soundtrack, creating a hybrid reading and listening experience, will energize digital book sales, and whether they can be accommodated on platforms people have purchased. Perhaps, it will further splinter the market. I created a form called BlogTracks to help vision and prepare for the real deal: Here's the project: http://tinyurl.com/bbgtjwn Valerie

Recently I completed ghostwriting a book (category: Creative Nonfiction | Spiritual-Memoir), recommended and worked with the editor, designed it, art directed the book cover with an graphic designer in England, and project managed the self-publishing from A-Z using CreateSpace. My client decided to use Amazon, the Print-On-Demand option, and her own website for book orders . I used social and professional media, an e-newsletter campaign, and a live book launch on my Blog Talk Radio Internet channel with book giveaways to the first two callers. Adding the Internet radio book launch event turned out to be a good decision. There were about 30 people who listened live, but after it ended, I was surprised that the podcast of the program went viral immediately (before I had a chance to download and edit it for podcasting), and we had over 2000 listeners to it within 24 hours! It kinda blew my mind. I edited it, and then did more social media promotion using the 2000 listeners in 24 hours stat. So, as many others here have said, it takes a multi-media approach, and reader/viewer/listener support if they connect with and like your book. Just this week, I contracted to become a freelance team member of a small, boutique publishing company. I'm in the midst of writing a proposal to create a Internet radio channel for them to support their clients. This experience has taught me the power of actually hearing what an author has to say about their book, their process--to get to know them. Here's a link to the book launch event if anyone would like to listen: http://tinyurl.com/9mzxqrj

Obviously, with ebooks taking up to 25% of the market share, as of today, we're seeing a direct impact of it on the large and small trade publishers. It's expected to flatten out somewhat in the near future, but it still shows signs of growth. I do know for a fact that my ebook sales slaughter my prints sales, and I'm sure that is because of the price reduction. I do think that ebook sales will eclipse print sales in the foreseeable future. And again, I think it's the price point that will bring this about, and for no other reason. I think more tablets, ipods and ereaders will be purchased, and their prices will drop, making them available to just about everyone.

I think that ebooks are here to stay. Myself, I hate reading things on the computer or a handheld device. And the lighting is very bad for your eyes. I prefer the feel of books. To paraphrase Ray Bradbury, a new book smells great. And an old book smells even better. He also hated the new technology--didn't even have a mobile phone. My feeling in general is that as a society we are depending far too much on the internet. It's just not secure enough.

I completely agree John. I love the smell and feel of a book. I caved and bought a Nook, but I got one that was not back lit. I get migraines if I read on the computer, (or write, which totally sucks!) for too long without taking a break! The Nook is for the convenience of reading unpublished books, or for someone to send me a PDF (to save them on expense) But I almost never buy books on my Nook. If I'm gonna pay for the thing, I want a good old-fashioned paper copy!

I found all of this really helpful as I have a book with art (comedy) that I've been working on a sound CD to go with it for a bit. I had never heard of booktracks....nice to know my idea is not far off the new marketing for books!

From what I see in the industry, multiple forms will coexist. Right now there is a push back on ebooks. And numbers that show people going back to paper. So I see ebooks as its own category and eventually it will have its own reviewers, which are essential for sales & marketing. Now it's emerging from the vanity stigma and reviews are mostly pay-for and have no validity. Genres are breaking through YA, science fiction, some how-tos, well-known authors. But writing serious fiction, agents are still the way to go, like it or not. Future industry will evolve a gate-keeping strategy, some threshold of sales that means book can get mainstream deals and distribution everywhere. But right now it's all cross-over and at great effort and luck. Mainstream and indy book culture are still separate and the money is elusive. for self-publishing

I self-published in print some years ago and then followed up with a kindle option when that became available. For myself, I'm a printed book man - I borrowed a kindle for an afternoon once and was happy to give it back - but the tidal wave of e-book publishing is upon us and I think we all need to find the place that we fit most comfortably. The technology that we are using to access e-books today will be radically different in another five years... just think about how short a time it was ago before we had tablets and kindles and smartphones. I am in the process of producing a film and am now looking at ways to distribute it over all of these new technical portals... crazy times for us all, but we should all be looking at how we can engage with the technology in a way that works for us all, in our own individual niches. But you have to admit, these are exciting times for us all to be creating in... now, where did I put my book!

I believe E-books, or whatever the new technologies bring us in the future, will stay and thrive. The paperbacks are still my preferred kind however, new kindles, etcetera, are not bad substitutes. It’s possible that future books will imitate the paperback form in some advanced manner, without being the paperbacks—3D visualizations of some sort. Otherwise, book marketing is a really one tough chore, to say the least...

Ebooks are doing quite well, as a medium. Book buyers have grown increasingly savvy regarding commercial vs. vanity or self publishing as the market is inundated with thousands of SP pieces of muck. Self and vanity published writers are notoriously unrealistic about their own work, and it has made the path of a serious self publisher that much more difficult.

In my humble opinion, the changes in the industry with ebooks and self-publishing is not a good thing. Anyone can publish anything now and a lot of it is not even competent. Noted science fiction writer, Ursula Le Guin says that because of the changes, it is very difficult for a writer to make a living. Even so you have to accept the changes. I do have a few of my short stories published with ebook companies (not self published), but most of them appear in printed books.

John, the vast majority of self published material is illiterate dreck - hence the buying public has grown savvier. i know people now who would just randomly buy things in genre, that now check to see who the publisher is. Writing was never the most lucrative profession. As a plus, there are SP writers who have built careers and do very well. But it's not a magical 'nyah evil gatekeeper' prospect that so many clueless souls imagine it to be. It does mean that it's helpful for a writer to have a blog, and interact with their fan base, which was never needed before.

I agree, Rachael. Amazon has helped by adding the approximate length of a book on sale for Kindle, along with a decent sized preview. Readers can tell whether they're getting a short story, novella, or a full length novel, along with a look at the editing and story content. I've noticed lately though, the marketers are filling up the preview length with ads to give the readers a shorter look. :) I think the next step on Amazon's part would be to preview an entire first chapter past the commercials.

I agree with you, Rachel, that's why I try to get my books reviewed by the Midwest Book Review and other, recognized reviewing agencies. Still, I’m not sure that is enough... Steven Nedelton @www.snedelton.com

On the other hand, some published novels were not so hot and yet did fantastically. I'm sure I don't have to mention them by title. So, go figure... Our reader public is partly to blame too...