Evan Hughes has written an interesting piece on eBooks, the publishing industry, self-publishing, and the future of writers and readers for wired.com
I won’t summarize the article (since you can read it here) which nicely describes many trends reported elsewhere in the recent past; but I will make a few observations about points that particularly struck me. Here they are:
Successful Self-Published eBooks Are Serials Written in Pulp Genres
The writers who’ve had success self-publishing eBooks seem to work largely in traditional pulp genres like science fiction, crime, horror, romance, and erotica. These writers produce books in series, each of which creates an intense desire to read the next, just like one tasty potato chip makes you desperate to eat another. The digital format lets you satisfy that desire instantaneously and buy the next volume, from any place at any time.
As a bonus, you don’t have to figure out how to get rid of the damn thing once you’ve finished it. The pleasure in pulps is all about reading the next one, not re-reading the ones you already own, which tend to lie around the house and glare at you reproachfully for having paid $30.00 for the hard cover. Passionate fans are excepted from this problem.
All of which makes me feel better about my own lack of self-publishing success with Queen of the Nude since my mistake was not following this model. (I’m rationalizing because I’m feeling vulnerable today.)
I seem to have written erotica. Good! But I’ve actually written a commercial fiction / literary fiction hybrid. Bad! And it is not the first in a series. Bad! And I pretty much wrap everything up on the last page. Bad! I’m doomed. Okay, enough whining.
Only Writers Who Aren’t Yet Successful Need Publishers
Traditional publishers offer writers only two services of any real value today: some modest – but highly unreliable – assurance of quality and marketing muscle which they may or may not flex. (Big guaranteed advances also count as a service, if you can get one.)
These services are useful primarily to writers who might deserve an audience but don’t have one. Successful authors, self-published or otherwise, don’t need help building an audience, and these audiences generally don’t need an assurance of quality because they have already have a decent idea of what they will get.
This means, right now, traditional publishers only offer compelling value to those writers least likely to make them money. And these companies have got to be sweating blood at the thought of the moment when eBooks capture a great enough percentage of all book sales that writers like Stephen King decide they can make more coin without them.
Because when this happens – and I don’t usually pretend I can predict the future, but I think it is a when – the traditional publishing industry will need to find new ways to offer writers and readers value. Or cease to exist.
Books Still Need Paper Copies to Sell Books?
This is an intriguing assertion. According to Hughes, lots of data suggests that while people like to buy books online, they still like to discover these books in stores. So books published on paper and sold in bricks-and-mortar stores will always be essential to publishing.
I’m not sure this is true, however. People discover books many ways, particularly from friends, reviews, and social media as well as advertising.
I enjoy browsing in bookstores and buying books from them (one of the few forms of shopping I actually like), but I’m hard pressed to think of an occasion when I have ever bought a book I had wholly discovered in a store.
Like traditional publishers, bookstores are going to need more new ideas to survive. I don’t believe either is fated to go extinct. But I don’t see a solution to their problems, either.
Peter Galen Massey 
I like to buy books both on line and in bookstores. BUT I like them in traditional printed form – and always will. I have a Kindle but hardly use it. I don’t know about publishers elsewhere, but here in NZ they are playing it very safe, and not at all encouraging to new writers. Interesting what you said about e-books
In the northeast corridor of the US, the electronic format devices are common, and all the device usage is going up. Interesting that “disposable” books or “fast food” books are good ebooks. I read a combo of paper and electronic but paper more often because my iPad screen hurts my eyes.
The advantage of Kindle is it is kinder to your eyes than iPad. I suspect that ‘disposable’ or ‘fast food’ books are selling better as ebooks because lovers of real literature are more addicted to paper. 🙂
You know, I was thinking that too, without being ready to come out and say it because it might sound … snobby, I guess. But books that you want to savor not gobble feel like books you want to own on paper: the object as some indication of a more permanent or durable relationship. On the otherhand, I wouldn’t carry around my Oxford Shakespeare in any form other than Kindle. I has to stay in the house in paper.
Can’t imagine why 🙂
I seem to have a psychological block in reading books purchased online. The mind seems to invent enough excuses to not read them and I won’t waste precious space whining about that here. Yet, I’m forever staring at one screen or other and like to retire to the bed with a pulp and paper book. I know it is bad for trees. But as long as fools like me exist you’ll have brick and mortar bookstores with palpable books.
The idea about the successful genres of ebooks is interesting as well enlightening. I still need to download your book though and read it, which I must, considering your punchy, probing writing.
Ereaders and computers have their own environmental impacts. Toxic metals and no market for recycling them in the US recently since prices for the materials have collapsed.
How did the monks/scribes and illustrators feel when printing took over or changed their work descriptions? Are we at a similar crossroads? If so, I think we may all come out better off from the changes sweeping the book world.
They probably thought the machine produced books were ugly. But the knowledge explosion worked out pretty well.
Yes, that could be so. That raises another issue; some of the lovely things about books are the font and the paper quality. I am not that familiar with ebooks. Do they take the same care over layout and fonts, I wonder? Is it even important anymore?
The font is scalable so you get some ugly line breaks when you go beyond the standard layout. For straight text it’s fine. An art book of something where text and images interact, that could be dicey.