'Some ePubs (mostly romance, a traditional early adopter of new technology due to the sheer volume of books the genre produces each month) have been around for nearly a decade. They sell eBooks for $3-$8 (which is brilliant for someone in the UK!), pay up to 40% royalties, sell straight to the consumer, offer multiple formats and many no longer use DRM. It's the romance crowd that are buying up eReaders too - when you're used to purchasing fifteen books a month you run out of physical space very quickly. eReaders allow you to buy more but spend less. They also allow you to keep buying once your eye sight starts to go, with font resizing and text-to-speech features.'I am usually so stuck in my groove of thinking I can't see outside it. But what Mina says makes perfect sense. These readers (the majority female) are probably addicted to romance so they need to satisfy their addiction.
Following along the same train of thought, I am sure that fantasy readers are also strong contenders for e-reading. They probably reread favourite series and as many fantasy books are very thick, an e-version of them is very handy.
So there is obviously a market for e-readers, just not one that I identify with.
2 comments:
Once, when waiting for an elderly neighbour, I tried to read the first page of a Mills and Boon. I couldn't even finish the first page. However I also know some readers of this genre who can get through several each week. Even using e-books it would be an expensive habit. I can think of a lot of real books I would rather buy.
Hiya - I'm actually Mina Kelly (under my non-romance penname). Found you through Google Alerts ^_^
Romance has adapted well to eReaders for a few reasons, I think. Firstly, it's has a scarily voracious market. Something like 400 books are put out a month by the big names alone, and there are authors who pump out six or seven books a year (without cowriters, unlike Patterson!). If you look at somewhere like DearAuthor or SmartBitchesTrashyBooks you'll find people who regularly buy upwards of thirty books a month. Secondly, category romances, the ones written specifically to appeal to the voracious readers because they can be devoured in an evening, are shorter than an average novel. Romance ePublishers have recognised this market and have managed to snap up a lot of novellas and novelettes that wouldn't be publishable traditionally. Thirdly, a lot of romance readers are slightly embarrassed, and an eReader provides a good bit of book-anonymity! It's an oft-maligned genre, which might explain why its fans take to new technology like eReaders faster than those who like literary fiction (which can get really snobby about eBooks and the smell of paper). Some people like what's written on the page, not the pages it's written on.
Romance has another advantage - new authors are usually offered very low advances. Most ePublishers don't offer advances at all, just very high royalties. It takes dedication to write full time without advances, but a few authors have already proved it possible. It allows the ePubs to take much bigger risks on authors without having to worry about one big seller propping up the rest of the stable. It's not just the new (ish - Ellora's Cave is about seven years old now) publishers who are working the eBook game, though. Harlequin have proved that print publishers don't have to be dinosaurs, and don't have to raise prices to prop up their own business plan.
eReaders really are aimed at those who buy and read multiple books a month. They're just not worth the investment otherwise. I think we will see them take off more with genre fiction because there's a lot of capacity for niche publishers and a lot of very loyal fans. I'm surprised Sci Fi didn't leap on the badnwagon earlier, but as a genre it's surprisingly conservative about publishing (who can forget the accusation us bloggers and e-authors are all "pixelstained technopeasant wretches"?). I think you're write that Fantasy will take to it (fantasy romances certinaly have, especially paranormals), and I can see other oft-derided genre fiction taking a place. However, I don't think eReaders will ever be a really mainstream gadget, because mainstream society just doesn't read enough to justify it. Sad, but true.
www.solelyfictional.org
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