Category Archives: kindle

Catching the digital wave

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Digital book sales, aka e-books, continue to soar.

According to the AP and other news reports, Random House has announced that they are digitizing thousands of additional books. Excerpts will be available online.

This move comes in the wake of the explosive growth of Amazon.com’s Kindle reader, which Oprah put on the map. I haven’t tried the Kindle yet, but if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll wind up on Santa’s list for it this year.

In general, it sounds like the heads of the book publishing industry must read the pixels on the wall and embrace ebooks, or risk becoming that industry’s next version of Detroit’s Big Three.

Of course, buried in the recent news reports about rise of e-books was the caveat that digital book sales represent only a thin slice of publishing’s pumpkin pie–estimated to be about one percent. But I’m old enough to remember when Japanese car makers had only a small piece of the American automobile market. Today, they’re cleaning our clock.

I do love the idea of being able to sample book excerpts and audio books online. That’s a powerful “sales lead-in” that’s going to encourage hard-core hardback book readers like me to jump aboard the e-book wagon.

I think it’s time for all of us to stop mourning the nongrowth of paper book sales, and celebrate the new digital age. It’s the future. Let’s embrace it. For example, last week when I posted, I was freaking out about the changes in the industry. This week, I have decided to reframe my thoughts about the book publishing crisis, and seek out the hidden opportunities in those changes.

Because ready or not, the digital era is here.

So what about you? Are e-books in your library yet? Have you asked Santa for a Kindle?

Update: Speaking of changes in the industry–in the comments, Joe alerted us to the fact that Houghton Mifflin has told its editors to stop acquiring manuscripts. Here’s a link to the article.

Talk me down—is the book biz doomed?

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Clare’s post yesterday about the demise of publishing sent me scurrying around the Web. I was
searching for signs of hope that the book publishing industry is not modeled after a Model T or a dinosaur, doomed by an era of digital entertainment to be consigned to the museum or bone yard.

What I’ve found so far is not encouraging. For example, I stumbled across a piece by Boris Kachka in New York Magazine, “Have We Reached the End of Book Publishing As We Know it?” Per the well-researched, well-argued article, the book publishing industry as we know it is doomed, as evidenced by the following:

  • Upheavals in the corporate executive suites
  • The mad rush to e-book publishing
  • The continuing woes of midsize publishers
  • The declining fortunes of in-store booksellers, including Borders
  • A “vertical market grab” by Amazon

Kachka’s article contains a scary message for publishers and authors. Everyone in the industry that he interviewed seems to agree that the old business model of publishing is going away, but no one has a lock on how the future will look. Kachka posits that the new “big thing” in commercial publishing might be—I kid you not—true-life stories about heroic pets who teach humans lessons about being human. The rest of the publishing landscape might consist of reduced advances for authors (not an adjustment for most midlist writers, whose advances are already paltry), some form of POD and e-book distribution, and an uncertain future for everything else, including so-called “literary” fiction.

I hope the article exaggerates, but just in case, I’m getting prepared. Did I mention I have a great story about our newly adopted cat? Her name is Bianca–she’d a lovely blue-eyed Siamese who is teaching me how to be more human. Tie-ins include a lovely “Wisdom of Bianca” cat calendar. Details to follow.

Now, about that million dollar advance…


Please someone, talk me down. Is the publishing business model really broken? Is there no hope?

If you can’t reassure me, then tell me about about a heroic puppy who teaches a cat how to be more human.

Otherwise I’ll have to order the e-book version from Amazon.

It’ll be here in ten seconds.

Oprah blesses the Kindle

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The word sent a jolt through the author community:

“Oprah endorses Kindle.”

The Kindle, in case you’ve been marooned on another planet, is Amazon’s much-ballyhooed e-book reader. Oprah’s nod is likely to give the gadget a boost in sales. To quote one industry insider, a blessing by the Queen of Talk TV means that “the sale of Kindles will increase sales by approximately one bazillion percent.”

I’m a bit of a Luddite when it comes to gadgetry, so I haven’t tried the Kindle yet. But I was gratified recently to learn that my latest book, A KILLER WORKOUT, has been published in a Kindle edition. Now that my book has made its debut in the e-reader world, it feels like my baby has grown up and left home. And forgotten to send a postcard.

I’ve been a “slow adopter” when it comes to e-reader technology. Basically, this is because, 1) my daughter convinced me to buy a very expensive e-book reader years ago, and it broke within a month; and 2) I find it tiring to read text all day on the computer screen.

But I have to admit, there are some real advantages to e-books, particularly the Kindle. For example, when I heard that Kindle lets you increase the text size, I thought—“Okay, this is a winner.” Me and a silent majority of over-40 presbyopic-somethings, we’re yearning for text that is ten feet tall!

Plus, the Kindle promises that its “revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.”

I will definitely give the Kindle a trial run (probably by giving it to someone close as an Xmas present).

Meanwhile, I’m interested to hear from folks who have tried the Kindle. What’s the reading experience like? Authors, have Kindle sales boosted your audience?

Kindle Schmindle

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By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

Well I finally saw one of the new wonder machines by amazon.com. I was on a cross-country flight from Washington to San Francisco when the guy in the seat next to me pulled out this nifty electronic pad, flipped a switch and made writing appear on the screen. He said it was a business book that he’d downloaded from the amazon site.

I’m not much for chatting up the people next to me on airplanes—in fact, I get my noise-canceling headphones in place as fast as I can as the most polite means of telling the world to leave me the hell alone—so I nodded and feigned fascination for long enough to get my trusty Boses on my ears and then went about my business. Had I been in the mood to engage, though, I would have told him that he hadn’t in fact downloaded a book—he’d downloaded merely the text.

I’ve been called a Luddite before, and not without good reason, so maybe it’s no surprise to my friends that I hold strong to my belief that a book by definition is printed on paper. A “book” on CD is a recorded story. A “book” on an LCD screen is . . . well, hard to look at. I’m a traditionalist on these things.

For me, the act of reading a book involves nearly all the senses. I love the feel of the pages, the aroma of the ink, the gentle whisper of sound that some with every page turn. When I read a really good book, the most impressive scenes and turns of phrase aren’t just locked into my memory as scenes or sounds, they’re locked in by their position on the page where I read them. As I plow through a book, I love to watch the progression of the bookmark. When I’m starting out on a trip, it’s that bookmark landmark that tells me whether or not I need to put a backup book in my briefcase.

When a book is awaiting its turn to be read, it lies supine on a pile; when it’s finished, it gets a place on my library shelves. On cold nights in particular, there’s no greater pleasure than sitting in that book-lined room with the reading light on, swallowed in my green leather chair with the volume on my lap and a scotch in my hand. I’m not much for napping, but if one must fall asleep accidentally, there is no better circumstance for it.

I look at computer screens all day and many nights. Everywhere I go, it seems, I’m surrounded by plastic and buttons.

But not in the library. Never in my library.