If you are an eBook author, you often find yourself promoting, or (depending on how you look at it) defending the medium just as much as you do your work itself. It gets old, honestly, and many people I know in the biz tend to go in one of these two directions:
1. My work IS in print. It's an eBook, deal with it.
2. Man, if my work were in print, the world would beat a path to my door.
The truth of the matter is somewhere in between. I do lean toward option one, honestly, because eBooks are the future. Amazon and Harlequin just got into the game in big ways, so I'm not the only one who thinks so. Ask anyone who owns an iPod or other mp3 player.
So, Heather, does that mean that they'll be no more print books, ever? Well, no. Go to the mall, are we all fresh out of CDs? My music purchases are primarily mp3s now, but that doesn't mean I won't buy a CD if it's an artist I really adore and would like a hard copy of their work. However, I find as time goes on I'm doing that less and less. I get CDs as gifts, mostly - Mr K got me Tori Amos' new album as a gift, but I bought myself Siouxsie's Mantaray on iTunes and burned a hard copy.
So how does that related to my reading habits? Well, of the last six books I bought - two were print editions. The rest? Ebooks. Now, I know I'm a young whippersnapper and whatever, right? The well-entrenched romance reader, the ones Romantic Times lauds, who are "avid romance readers since their teens and currently read between 10 and 40 books a month"? Are they buying eBooks?
Let me stop here for a moment and talk about my mother. If you look at my MySpace, the only hero I have listed is my mom. She's awesome. My mom's the first person who really encouraged me to be a writer, when I was a little girl. My mom is one of RT's target readers. She's an avid Nora Roberts fan, buys at least ten single titles a month. She's sharp, professional, creative, and loyal. She's doing some continuing education right now, and she remarked to me the other day, "I'm so tired of printing out PDF files. How much did your Palm Pilot cost?"
We talked a bit about what my Tungsten does vs getting a dedicated reader, like Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader.
I find it extremely telling that my mother, who's a baby boomer, and not-uber techie is interested in a dedicated reader. Not that my mom's a slouch either - she knows her way around the computer, but I am still hands-down the family's alpha geek.
The main lament right now amongst writers and readers is compatibility. It's a legit complaint, and I can remember when it was a problem for mp3 players as well. Speaking of my mother again, I went with her to pick out her mp3 player, and I ended up advising her to get an iPod because I felt its interface was the simplest and most user-friendly. However, as most people know, while an iPod plays mp3s, other mp3 players don't like its digital rights management (DRM) .m4a format.
That must be why no one buys iPods, right?
Wait... ;-)
So where does that leave those of us who are indie or eBook authors? If my book's in print, the world will beat a path to my door... Well, no. One look at JA Konrath's blog will tell you that it's not so. However, that said, face to face sells books. If your work's not in hard copy, what do you do?
First of all, stop telling yourself it's not in print. It is. And don't let other people tell you otherwise, they are misinformed. Be nice about it though. ;-) And head over to VistaPrint and get some promo items whipped up. VistaPrint's highly reasonable, and you can often get author promo items for only the cost of shipping. You can make bookmarks, notepads, post cards, etc. You know what I carry on me all time, in case people ask me what I do for a living? I have my Palm Tungsten, bookmarks and my business cards. I turn on the Palm, show them how easy it is to open and read an eBook, and then I give them a card or a bookmark. Easy peasy.
Now, speaking of writing books, I need to get back to that...
