The Burgeoning eBook Market

Today's post is from guest author Jean Henry Mead who began her writing career as a journalist, became a magazine editor and an award-winning photo-journalist before branching into full-length books. Her novels include a Wyoming historical novel titled Escape, and her new Logan & Cafferty mystery, A Village Shattered.

I first heard about the e-book market in 1999 when small electronic publishers sprang up like weeds in a flower garden. Many of their products were substandard and unedited, which gave the market a bad name. Now, the standards have not only improved dramatically, their quality is nearly, if not equal to that of the larger publishing houses.

Since the year 2000, Japanese ebook sales have reached ten billion yen. Reported sales in the U.S. from fifteen e-publishers total some $14 million for the first three quarters of this year, which doesn’t include library and discounted sales that may double the number.

I served as a judge for the recently held 2009 Eppie Awards competition, the "Oscars" of ebook publishing, and was amazed at the quality of writing. Some of the books I judged were from the British Isles and I will definitely look for additional work by those authors as well as our own domestic writers.

I signed with a small publisher for my last two books, and both have come out in print as well as ebook editions. I now have more control over the final product and there’s never a long wait between acceptance and publication. Now that promoting your book online has become so much easier than road touring, in less than a week of publication, my mystery novel, A Village Shattered, reached the number one spot in sales at the Fictionwise-ePress site. It’s a good feeling to know that your book can reach bestseller status in a worldwide market from a small publisher.

I’ve heard disparaging remarks on a couple of forums about “writers of that ilk,” meaning published in ebook form. I seriously doubt the writers who made the remarks have read ebooks lately. In my opinion, they’re first rate from most publishers. I’ve been writing professionally for forty years and have learned something about quality.

I’m also a bibliophile. I love books and have thousands of them in bookcases in every room in my house. In fact, we’ve run out of space. It’s gotten to the point where we’ll either have to build on another room to serve as a library, or make the transition to ebooks. I bought my husband and myself ebook readers for Christmas. My husband loves to read in bed and the reader is backlighted so he can read in the dark while I sleep. Most of the readers can store from 60 to 120 books in their small cases so they’re perfect for airline flights or long trips by car.

This year new marketing models have been developed to standardize ebook readers, and because they’ve achieved global distribution, and electronics manufactures are producing more e-readers for general consumption, the market is increasing dramatically. Amazon.com has its Kindle model, endorsed recently by Whoopi Goldberg on “The View.” She takes the Kindle with her wherever she travels, and loves the fact that over a hundred books are available in her palm-sized reader. There are a number of other e-readers just as capable of satisfying their owners, and hopefully will all soon be standardized so that every multi format book can be read on each one.

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Ms. Mead will be here all day to answer any questions you have about her books, the e-book business, or any other questions you may have (like how many books you read when you judge contests like the EPPIE). Please use the comments link below to ask your questions and check back later today to read Ms. Mead's responses.

Tommorrow, Ms. Mead takes her virtual book tour to Holly Jahangiri's blog. The full tour schedule is at MyBlogTour. At the end of the tour, three lucky winners will be selected to receive one copy each of A Village Shattered.

The New and Improved Schedule

Now that Houston's Ike recovery is firmly under way and most of The Final Twisters are operating under their own power, it's time to get back to business here.

A Little Background (or a lot of background)
Near the end of July, I joined a Yahoo! Group called BlogBookTours. The purpose of the group is to teach authors how do conduct effective virtual tours. My purpose in joining the group was to learn to do just that.

It's been an interesting and enlightening two months.

You see, I joined BBT just in time to see Dani Greer's blog-a-day challenge. Dani, master of all that is BBT, suggested that learning by doing is the best way to go. She said we needed to learn to develop a blog following by making regular posts and that sticking to a daily regimen for 31 days would embed the lessons deep into our souls so we would remember always...or something to that effect. Sounded good to me. I accepted the challenge.

My first question - what is a blog, where is it, and how do I get permission to write to it. (Okay, take a minute to finish laughing, I'm sure Dani did. Or maybe she cried.)

Answer - you have to create your own blog.

Oh.

So the start was a bit rough. I scrambled, crammed, learned the answers to my questions, fell on my nose a few times and created this blog in time to join the challenge. (Not exactly what happened, but close enough.)

Then I blogged everyday in August (sort of). I watched with amazement as readership numbers climbed. Blogging started to get exciting. I checked in several times a day to see if I needed to reply to comments. I thought I was doing great.

Then the September critiques started. My fellow blog-a-day challengers came up with questions like:

• "Does the URL match the Blog Title?"
• "Does the content match the Title, do readers know what to expect when they take time to read your blog?"
• "Is there a way for readers to subscribe so new blogs are pushed to the reader instead of the reader having to check in periodically to look for new posts?"
• "Did you think to had your books so reader know they exist? Did you include a link to an on-line bookstore just in case anyone might like to buy your books?'

Okay, so my blog wasn't really in the same universe as 'good'. There was more than a little room for improvement. I started making lists. I ignored my blog. Readership fell. Fast.

I resolved to do better. Hurricane Ike resolved to make that a challenge.

Honestly, I was one of the lucky few who lived without electricity for only 24 hours. Most of the members of my writing group were not so lucky - and the group's blog was not available for weeks. This was a major issue because we have an anthology of mystery stories coming out October 10 and had planned to use the group blog site to showcase the authors during September and to get the word out about the launch party for A Death in Texas.

Solution - use this blog for The Final Twist blog posts. Simple, right? Try contacting sixteen people who have no, or unreliable, phone service, no electricity, and water that only trickles out of the faucet. And when you find them, ask if they wouldn't mind ignoring the tree in the living room for a little while longer so they could figure out how to email a blog post. (Okay, only one person had a tree in the living room - and it didn't crash through the roof, it pushed through the French doors without breaking any of the windows.)

Somehow, it all worked out. And now The Final Twisters all have electricity and the group site is back up. I've had plenty of time to procrastinate, er, I mean, plan, and I'm ready to try again.

The New and Improved Blog

The new and improved blog has a stated purpose and a schedule. The purpose is to share upbeat, positive information about books, writers, and the reading/writing universe in general.

Monday is for readers. Every Monday, I'll post a review about a book I enjoyed and feel good about recommending to others. When possible, I'll interview the author. Please use the comments link below to share any questions that you would like to ask the authors.

Wednesdays are for writers. The posts will be short and will include inspirational or entertaining writing quotes, links to helpful sites or handy information, or my own learning experiences. If there is a topic you would like to see addressed, please use the comments link below to share your suggestion/request.

Fridays are potluck. Whatever strikes my fancy.

That's the general schedule. In addition, I'll have guest bloggers from time to time and I'll be hosting book tours - something I'm really looking forward to doing.

The rest of the time is open to special requests.

We start Monday with a review of At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon.