First Word

I don't know what exactly I was expecting. The eBook market flipped almost six months ago. I see people reading books on their various readers when I'm in airports. I guess now that I think about it, more people are reading off readers these days than print books. So, when our first book A Feast at the Beach by William Widmaier came off the eBook "assembly line," I have to be honest. I really didn't think we were going to do many sales. I was following the obvious market trends that were stupid to ignore, but at the same time, I was just making sure we were doing the right things and doing eBooks, period. After the book got reviewed on Culinate , I was happy to see the review, of course, but didn't consider that it might trigger the first set of eBook sales. It did and the ranking shot immediately down to #76 while the print version took a little while to catch. I'm fascinated to see how many eBooks will sell vs. print copies. The market trending suggest,...

eBook publishing is now moving into market maturity and out of the early adopters phase. For the past several years, Kindle was the primary eBook channel and many self-published authors leveraged it to distribute their books, which is a good way to save money. Now mainstream publishers are selling eBooks, and some publishers are just getting into the eBook market like 3L Publishing . We waited for the market maturity phase, because we wanted to ensure a built-in audience. Those of you interested in eBooks, please be careful in your selection of your publisher. Here are some tips about what you should know before you get into a relationship with an eBook publisher: Does this publisher have all of the eBook sales channels set up and functional? Do they have only Kindle? If they only offer Kindle, buyer beware. You could have Kindle. All self publishers could have Kindle. It is the big retail chain providers (Nook - Barnes and Noble; Kobo - Borders; and Apple - iBook) that aren't q...

The whole eBook publishing model is pretty exciting in many ways. First and foremost, the return on investment for the publishers and authors is about 10 times greater than with print. You're also preserving some trees (for you environmentalists out there). Setting up the eBook division took some effort. For those of you who assume it's no problem and anyone can get any eBook account with the likes of Apple and the iBook, think again. Apple does not allow every publisher to set up an iBook account. In fact, it takes a lot scrutiny to determine whether or not you're qualified as a vendor and a mound of paperwork (thank you Malia). If you have a new or emerging publisher who says that they can provide iBook access, you should probably make sure they do. It's not an open free-for-all. The industry is trying to discourage any Tom, Diane and Harry from setting up an amateur publishing shop and releasing a slew of bad titles. Apple, in particular, has a reputation to uphold. ...