A Word On The Printed Word

There were people who thought print would die (books in general, actually), when TV went colour way back when. If I were alive in that day, I think I would have disagreed.

I make my living writing and most of my income, over 90%, comes from eBooks. As an independent it's been a fantastic vehicle. I can offer my work for free, cut out the middle man, and charge comparatively little for most of my titles.

Most of my eBooks are read on cellular phones, and to be honest I've only read one book on my cell, I found it confining. Now I use my iPod Touch, which I find is much better. It's still not quite an eBook reader though.

Soon we'll be seeing a rush of eBook readers, most of them will be cheaper, multi-function and feature real, COLOUR EPaper. That's where I think a lot of the resistance to eBooks and eBook readers comes from, the fact that most people haven't seen EPaper. It's not backlit, so it's easy on the eyes, the picture is very solid and the edges are nice and crisp. You don't get the feeling that you're looking at a moving picture, which is where a lot of the eyestrain people experience on non-EPaper reading devices. LCD isn't a great reading medium for books.

The arrival of colour EPaper and inexpensive readers does signal a broadening of the market, but I don't think the printed book will disappear forever. Publishers are foolishly entrenched in an old business model, where they end up losing money on eBooks, so they'll be resistant. Aside from that there will always be people who prefer turning dead tree pages, and I'm not putting them down. Without them the printed book would die in no time.

I think the printed word will be around for a long time, even if books are one day considered quaint and antique.

Why go on about print, you ask?

Well, after hearing from many readers who prefer print, I've released Spinward Fringe Fracture as a printed book on Lulu.com. You can take a look at it in my Lulu store.

RL

Spinward Fringe Arrives At Shortcovers!

Some time ago I received an Email from someone at Shortcovers in response to a blog post I made concluding that they weren't ready to do business with independents. I didn't state it that directly, but it was difficult to conclude anything else after reading my comment.
After speaking with someone on the telephone (he was actually one of the top enders), I started the process of listing my work with them.

Even though they don't have an automated eBook conversion system in place yet and things are still in the refinement stage behind the scenes, the people at that company made it work. That's what was impressive about this organization, there are people behind each step of the conversion, listing and posting process. Even though it's frantic over there, it's a new subsidiary of the Indigo / Chapters corporation, they're improving things.

As far as the readers are concerned, they're working with publishers to bring prices down and their site is pretty slick. I have their eBook reader on my iPod Touch and it's very easy to navigate.

They are the best Canadian eBook company around by far, and they're positioned to be one of the top in the world from what I've seen so far. They currently have apps for iPhone, iPod Touch, Google Android (TM), and Blackberry.

You can see my listings at Shortcovers here.

RL