These days when I go to the bookstore I enjoy the fact I can find a seat but I'm also nervous. Things are different. There are less books. There aren't as many people/customers and that's just a signal that people are getting their products from other places.
Now that's not necessarily a bad thing. Competition often separates to wheat from the shaft, but I have to say as much as I love my Kindle I love my print books. I love the smell of a bookstore and the coffee which is brewing there and the cheesecake that is offered there as well.
As for the write-in quality. I love to feeling I get when I walk inside. Like I'm going to work. And when I want to I can go on lunch break.
Some would call this nostalgia or an unwillingness to change. I would ague that they're wrong. I've embraced change. I have two epub contracts and have just received my final galley on my first contract with them. I'd like a print contract and an advance too. Because as much as I love my publisher I think I deserve either that or a slightly higher royalty rate. Don't get me wrong here. My publisher is wonderful and I would recommend them to anyone. I'm just talking here.
But I think epubs and traditional pubs are working at cross purposes here as if one another are the enemy and Amazon and other distributors are coming out the true winners with the authors coming out the losers if we're not careful.
Where does that leave the bookstore write-in? Hopefully the traditional publishers will see the errors of their ways with this class action lawsuit to keep the cost ebooks jakked way up high and epubs will see theirs and follow Bob Mayer's example. Read the man's blog, follow him on twitter, he is a veritable fountain of information.
As for me I'll keep my ear to the ground and pray that the bookstore write-in remains a fixture of the writing scene.
2 comments:
Sometimes the saying, "be careful what you wish for," makes sense. From the beginning of my contracting with epubs, me and my peers have been praying for the ebook revolution. Well, it's here. The sale of over one million Kindles during Christmas proves it, and with full-length novels being offered at 99 cents to acquaint people with an author's work (indy authors who can control their own pricing), ebooks are the bargain readers need during these economical disaster days. Never have people needed to read for escape more than right now. Sadly, bookstores are feeling the pinch and need to find a way to incorporate ebook sales into their scheme of things. A new bookstore is coming to Nashville, and they are doing exactly that...there is still hope.
I also love my kindle and am self-publishing. That said, I don't want to see bookstores closing down, and libraries only stocking electronic books which can be downloaded at home.
I hope there's room enough for it all.
It kind of reminds me of the politically bickering in the U.S., where the losers are the citizens.
Morgan Mandel
http://www.morganmandel.com
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
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