eBook Sales Surpass Print Books!

by Susan Reichert, Editor-in-Chief

Global Post is an online US news company that focuses on international news. Their stated goal is "to redefine international news for the digital age."

Recently their headlines stated “Kindle eBook Sales Surpass Those of Print Books."

Amazon.co.uk, the UK's biggest bookseller, claimed the eBook sales herald a reading "renaissance" in the region.

The Guardian is a British national daily newspaper founded 1821 and said, “It seems the old leather bound's days are numbered. One hundred and 14 e-books are downloaded for every 100 hardback and paperback books sold by Amazon UK. That’s not including free e-books.

“These digital readers appear to be voracious: the average Kindler buys as many as four times the number of books than before buying the gadget,” said the BBC

“The company sold two million electronic editions of the crazy-popular novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" in only four months.

“However," the BBC continues, "these tech-savvy readers are not limiting themselves to mere reading. They're also publishing up the wazoo—Amazon UK cited a whopping 400 percent increase Kindle Direct Publishing in the last year.".

And they're reading one another's self-published works. Three out of the top 10 most popular Kindle authors of the year came by way of Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, this is according to the BBC.

According to GoodEReader, “Publishing companies are seeing a massive influx in digital revenue in 2012."

While some of us still want to hold the book we are reading in our hands, others are happy to be part of the eBook frenzy. Authors now are having to make decisions on whether to go the eBook route or the printed book route. I firmly believe it is time to do both. This way you will have two avenues of sales.When you talk with your publisher, be sure this subject is brought up. If they aren’t going to do an eBook, then I suggest you opt to do it yourself.

Have you published an eBook? What was your experience?

In the Groove

by Gary Fearon, Creative Director

I guess Sunday was Elvis Presley’s birthday. It would have escaped my awareness were it not for the newscasts mentioning the thousands of fans who continue to make their annual pilgrimage to Graceland. It makes me wonder whether more Elvis devotees flock to Memphis for his birthday or for the anniversary of his death every August. That’d be a good question for George Klein.

As for today, January 10^th, it’s also a day that goes down in music history. For Elvis fans, it was on this day he recorded “Heartbreak Hotel”.  For Beatles buffs like me, this was the day their first album, Introducing the Beatles was released in America. 

But perhaps most importantly of all, today is the anniversary of the 45.

Around since the late 40s (and introduced almost simultaneously with the vinyl LP), this 7-inch wonder was the most popular means for teens to bring their musical idols home with them. Anyone younger than thirty has probably never owned stacks of wax, nor have any idea what the oddly-shaped yellow plastic in the picture was for. This adapter – used for centering 45s on a turntable spindle – was officially called a “spider” (though, wisely, I don’t think they were ever marketed by that name).

Every music store carried 45s during the 50s and 60s, and it was their most popular section. But look how frequently things have changed since then:

By the late 60s 8-track tapes became the top portable music medium. Prone to malfunction, however, they would not survive long.

Next, hoping to save the day, were cassettes.  By the 70s, these little pocket-sized tapes were king. 

Then 1982 brought the CD, and nothing’s been the same since.  It nailed the coffin on all vinyl medium – and eventually tapes – with technology so universally accepted that it begat DVDs.  Now, even the CD and DVD are being threatened with eventual extinction by MP3s and streaming video.

Buyers have always been attracted to the most convenient medium for their entertainment, and in this mobile society we like being able to take it with us. The prevalence of e-books and e-readers speaks to that.

Fortunately for traditional publishers, books have always been and always will be sufficiently portable. The trade-off, perhaps, is that you can store countless books in a single digital reader. But for many who’ve compared the two, e-readers are the microwave version of a restaurant meal. It’s quick and does the trick but once in a while you gotta have the real thing. 

There will be room for both for a very long time, and the publishing world’s acceptance of the two allows them to support each other and play nice together.

So unlike the 45, the 8-track, the cassette, and possibly the CD, the digital age isn’t about to replace the printed page, which has been around since the 1400s, because we just plain love ink on paper. For that, I say to Gutenberg: Thank you, thank you very much.