e-books
DAVID LEVENSON/ALAMY
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Royalties are typically higher than for print which is good news for authors
With e-book royalties typically higher than print at an average 25 per cent – this is good news for some authors. The UK still has to catch up. With the release of the first iPad last April, the new one recently, and the Kindle in September last year, sales of ebooks are predicted to reach 3-5 per cent of the market by next year. According to the Publishers Association, digital sales were around £150m in 2009, with over 80 per cent in the academic-professional sector and only £5m in consumer sales.
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f course, with an e-book reader no-one knows what you’re reading. You can sit on the train or bus, transported to any world of your choosing without scathing or curious looks from fellow commuters. No longer do some readers feel that they have to wrap titles in a plain brown paper bag – especially those who buy books featuring men with sinewy limbs and flowing locks who seem to have a problem keeping their shirt on. Which may be one reason why in the US last year the share taken by romance and saga books was 14 per cent – seven times its print market share. Science fiction and fantasy fiction are also doing remarkably well.
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Romance moved from bodice rippers to more realistic contemporary stories in the 1980s and by 2009, more than 9,000 titles were published in the US, generating $1.36 billion in sales and giving it the largest share of the overall tradebook market. Today, romance is the fastest growing segment of the e-reading market according to Bowker, a research organisation for the publishing industry. Nielsen BookScan reported last September that sales of romantic print fiction have fallen for the first time since records began at a time while ebook sales have more than doubled. As romance print books have such a short shelf life, backlist titles are especially popular. Random House is currently converting its backlist books into digital form and Harlequin Enterprises has already digitised nearly 10,000 titles dating back to 2002. Publishers like e-books as they can make more on a per ebook basis. Retailers offset costs from selling e-books by not having to pay storage and shipping costs. Consumers like the instant
‘E’ IS FOR ROMANCE Julia Knight is the author of a number of fantasy romances and winner of the Electronic Published Internet Coalition award 2010 and a 2011 finalist. Her books are also available in print: www.juliaknight.co.uk “I started writing when I was housebound with ME – it was that or go crazy from daytime TV. My first e-book came out in January 2009. What I write isn’t firmly either fantasy or romance, and my sort of writing falls through the cracks in mainstream publishing. E-publishers thrive on giving readers something they don’t get in their normal bookshop.
access offered and the ability to carry hundreds of titles in one small device. And the role of ebooks in the publishing market has now been recognised with The New York Times’ plan to publish bestseller lists for e-book fiction and non-fiction. The industry is changing at an almost frightening rate. The new forms of distribution have the potential to help publishing become more flexible and reach a much wider audience. And with the new format comes other changes – with its launch of a new e-book store, Google has announced its intention to slash e-book cost by including advertising inside. In December 2010, Amazon announced Kindle for Web, a cloudbased solution which brings your book library to any web browser and turns any website into a Kindle bookstore. Of course, not everyone enjoys reading e-books and not all titles can be found in digital format. The high cost of the initial investment in a form of an e-reader makes e-books prohibitive to much of the world’s population and access to existing titles isn’t universal. Television changed the film industry but didn’t destroy it. In the same way, publishing may never be the same again, but there’s no reason to assume we need to mourn the death of print – at least, not yet.
“E-pubbing has the advantage of fast turnaround times and, because the publishers tend to be small, they’re also friendly and personal. There’s much less chance of getting lost in the shuffle. Though if you’re holding out for world-domination on the sales front, I wouldn’t recommend it. “I know several writers who make a comfortable income from writing for e-pubs, but they are very prolific. Sales are dependent on genre and, to an extent, any promo you’re willing to do. My erotic romance sold better than my fantasies. I don’t have ‘final’ figures, because, of course, they never go out of print or are returned from bookshelves. “The e-market is growing all the time. Genre might play the
biggest part in sales – romance readers are voracious! And at least half the reader emails I get are from men, so the romance isn’t putting them off. Some readers avidly purchase every release each week from their favourite publishers, and some of the more established writers have very rabid followers. “Before I published, I didn’t know much about e-books. But I’ve now found some utterly fantastic books to read that I wouldn’t have had a hope of seeing otherwise.”
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