Time to accentuate the e-positive?

I wonder whether I am wrong about the whole e-book thing. I like books, I was brought up on books but maybe it is time to look at the upside of Kindles and e-books rather than always homing in on the negative.

And I am going to look at it from a writer's point of view and all the pluses it has to offer. A little while ago Catdownunder blogged about a rather unpleasant encounter of the publishing kind. Basically she was being told she didn't stand a hope in hell of getting her writing published.

That is the trouble with many terrestrial publishers. They are often staffed by people:
a) Who don't have enough time to do their jobs, never mind look at uncharted authors. Therefore unless you are already a popular established (probably genre) author, a celebrity or someone who stands out in some way trailing their own audience (blog, website, etc), then you haven't much hope of being taken on.
b) Marketing-led decision makers. These ones want to replicate the bestseller that has just earned another publishing house squillions.
c) People who don't listen and dismiss out of hand hard thought out proposals taken to publishing meetings. These people can wreak the most damage with just one throw away remark. Once a thought has been vocalised, it can kill an idea stone dead.

Say you even do manage to get your work published, more often than not publishers only market the popular titles leaving little resources for the outsiders. Increasingly it's getting difficult to get the outsiders into bookshops at all. They probably have a 3-month selling gasp and then get returned (that's if they ever left the warehouse in the first place).

So maybe the whole terrestrial route into publishing is one to leave to last. Let them come to you if you manage to find your own audience in the e-sphere. I say this because I have noticed a couple of interesting articles about writers who have found their e-audience on the increase. May be we have reached a tipping point as is suggested.

Once article is about Catherine Ryan Howard and her e-book describing her time working at Disney. Make sure you read the comment to the article by Victoria Twead. Clicking on her name will take you to her blog and her own book about moving to Spain. It looks like she is another e-success. The other is a blog by Susan O'Leary and her experiences. I would say that these authors are all finding an audience through Kindle.

May be it is worth going this route and seeing what happens. It obviously works well with humourous accounts of personal experiences. I suspect a price of £2.99 works in its favour.

You just need to look at ways of taking a manuscript to e-book form (with a good cover). It needn't be expensive and if you can find your market it won't be long before you recoup your investment. You won't end up with hundreds (if not thousands) of books unsold under your bed, in your cupboards, in the loft, etc, like many who are drawn to self publishing. I'll try to find out who offers a reasonable service if you feel you aren't able to do it yourself.