ebooks

[Shard O'Glase]

MY sister is consideirng starting up a ebook publishing company for sci/fantasy. She's trying to figure out the market so I am posting an informal poll on ebook purchasing. How many ebooks do you buy per month?

 

[Krug]

Well I don't buy that often but I did buy some of Junji Itto's comics on Amazon.

 

[Wombat]

So far I have had no real incentive to buy ebooks (barring pdf game files, but even those get rare). I don't enjoy reading on-screen, so that seems to cut down on their usefulness, and by the time you print it out, it is usually cheaper just to buy a printed book.

OTOH, I am not willing to totally say "No". There might be some new innovation that will change my mind.

 

[Crothian]

Outsuide of gaming products I've never really had an interest in getting e-books. It's on thing to read gaming stuff on the screen but reading novels like that is just odd seeming. I'm not against the idea, but I'd need pretty good reasons.

 

[your father is]

There's no doubt the ebook industry is growing and will continue to grow, but it is still very, very small. There is a small press called Wheatland Press that does quality POD books (all with top talent, like Jerry Oltion and David Brin) that is making a name for itself, but I can't think of many others.

I've got stories in a few e-anthologies right now from Cyberpulp (Amazing Heroes and Kings of the Night II), and I should be able to work backwards once I start getting royalty checks to see how many copies actually sell. My personal feeling is that reading could become very popular on cell phones and PDAs in the near future, and this could have a huge impact on things.

If your sister goes for it, tell her good luck -- and keep us apprised!

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Thanks for the responses so far. My sister has been having toruble finding data on ebooks for any other genre than romance. Romance in standard books comprises 54% of all the novel sales, scifi covers about 7%. The general hope is that scifi readers may be a bit more tech savy or willing to use tech and therefore have a higher percentage of ebook readers. Still one of the well established romance ebook sites sells 30,000 ebooks a month which is very profitable. While the same level of sales may not be found in scifi ebooks, if a higher percentage of scifi readers read ebooks than romance readers read ebooks it might be close enough to make the business work.