So the new wave of publishing is here. (Some might say it's been here for a while.)Writer friends are publishing their books for Kindle, for iPad. Some are publishing only in e-formats, like John Urban with A Single Deadly Truth. Some are putting their out-of-print books up there, like LI Bartlett with her Jeff Resnick series.
JE Seymour just e-published two short stories that feature the same character as in her newly published (paper) book, Lead Poisoning, which she has also put up on Smashwords in all e-formats.
Authors make more money from an e-book than from a printed book. When the struggle to find an agent or small press has failed and you really just want to get your many-times revised and edited work into the hands of readers, it's much more feasible to publish an e-book yourself than to publish it in printed form. And apparently it's not that hard to format the copy for e-publishing, although reports have it that some hair-pulling and perhaps hair-greying is involved. You get some cover art and off you go.
Now, I don't even own an e-reader. I can get the software for free for my netbook, but have hesitated to do so. Maybe because I work on a computer at my day job for way too many hours. When I get home, I want paper, not more screen time. But Sylvia, a frequent-traveler friend, delighted in her Kindle purchase, because omitting 5 books per trip lightened her luggage considerably. I don't think that print will vanish. I very much hope it won't. (And let's not even get into reading a book on a telephone! Or should we?)
What do you think? Do you mostly read on paper or on screen? Should I take the plunge as a reader and then see how it goes as a writer?
