Ebooks are a huge deal, it’s true, but in my opinion the appeal of the “Hah! Take THAT, traditional publishing!” story leads to misinformation and exaggeration. Here’s a collection of articles on ebooks.
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2011/01/importance-of-context-part-1.html – ebook reality vs hype AND http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/12/will-you-ever-buy-mostly-e-books.html AND http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/11/top-10-myths-about-e-books.html AND (which I think is an example of some of the extremely rare people who are doing ok – while still not as good as print publishing) http://ripping-ozzie-reads.com/2011/01/08/e-books-and-indyself-publishing/
As you may have noticed (but I clearly did not), yesterday was Friday. I’d post your weekly book review, but I plan to write up “Red Dirt Diary 2: Blue About Love”, and that’s not going to happen for a few days yet. I’m basically better now, but still sleeping a lot and moving very little.
I think the thing about eBooks is that you still have to actually write a good book that people want to read. One of the nice things about traditional publishing is that there is a process to find talent and fine tune it. Its much harder for poor writing to make it onto a printed page (although there is certainly some dross out there!!). I’ve been avidly accumulating ebooks for 6 months, and wading through the masses of self published or the offerings of the ebook only publishers has been at times entertaining, but mostly somewhat depressing. My advice to writers is one word – editing!!!! Basic spelling and grammar errors are extremely common, as are major inconsistencies in plot. I find myself wondering if the author bothered to even read over the book themselves (let lone pass it round their friends) before they threw it out for the world to see……
I also thoroughly recommend going to the effort of organising an actual ‘Author page’. It makes it feel like YOU care about your work at the very least!
“much harder for poor writing to make it onto a printed page”. SO true!