Y’all probably don’t read my blog. I curse muchly and there is “sex” in my banner, not to mention a bare nekkid lady.
Before you read any further (if you are still reading or the least bit interested), please go to these websites and study them. Ignore the content; I want you to see what they’re doing. Then come back. I’ll wait.
My Bookstore and More (mostly Samhain Publishing’s titles, but look under the “manufacturers” tab and see the other e-book publishers).
Back? Cool. Now, please go here:
A more complete list of e-book readers.
Did you understand what I wanted you to see? Awesome!
As a consumer of e-books, I would like to offer you a friendly suggestion, which is to embrace the digital distribution of your titles. The e-book publishers I linked are making money hand over fist. The devices I linked are the way people read e-books. This will grow.
You probably don’t understand the seduction of having an entire library in your palm, and that’s okay. There are lots and lots of people who say they won’t give up print for anything, and then they get to live with an e-book reader for maybe two or three days, and they’re hooked.
There’s also something very seductive about being able to log onto an e-bookstore and download a bunch of books onto your device immediately. No driving. It’s all about impulse. I can talk myself out of an Amazon purchase because it involves shipping time. It leaves the shopping cart and goes into the wish list, never to be seen again. I don’t even want to go to a bookstore anymore.
I’ve now encountered three small LDS presses and individuals somewhere in the LDS publishing arena dismiss e-books as so much of a passing fad, a waste of time or, worse, think that “e-book” is synonymous with “PDF.” I simply have to shake my head at their short-sightedness.
Be on the cutting edge of the digital age of books. Take a cue from the church’s rabid embrace of the interwebz and streaming audio and its ability to reach its members nearly effortlessly.
But beyond that, the take-home message here is this: E-bookstores are dangerous to the health of my checkbook.
Want to know the real reason I don’t buy anything from Deseret Book, Zarahemla, Signature Books et al? No e-books. I want to read your books; really I do, but I’m not going back to paper unless you give me something terribly compelling. I buy e-books on impulse. Impulse. Hear that? IMPULSE.
Please give me a reason to throw my money at you in the middle of the night when one of your titles catches my eye. Pretty please?
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
I loooove e-books. Now that my eyes are shot, I have a 17″ laptop screen so I love the big print and the fact that I can sit up and read after my husband goes to bed.
Chaeya
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Hi. I’m a former LDS publisher and I read your blog. (I do skip the curse words, though.) I owned Rosehaven. After five years of incredible growth, we crashed and burned at the end of 2006. Why? DB didn’t pick up our last couple of titles. We ended up with too much in print and not enough paths to the market.
For the past year and a half, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get back into the publishing business without the high risk of print inventory. I’ve been recently thinking of the e-book trend. I have a Kindle and I LOVE it. And I’ve tried to buy LDS books for my Kindle and very few exist in that format. I always click that “Tell the publisher…” button on Amazon, but I don’t know if it actually does anything.
Anyway, the point of this is that Rosehaven is going to be re-opening this fall (I think) specializing in creating and selling various e-file versions of LDS books. Now I’m sure there will be many publishers who won’t cooperate–especially the big ones–but there are quite a few authors with rights to their older books and I’ll be approaching them with this possibility first.
So, I think you’re right on track here.
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Karlene, I format my books myself. Please download the 200-page sample of The Proviso, and then go here and download the different formats of “Plain and Precious Part of The Fob Bible” if you would like to see a sample of what they all look like.
Please, please, please contact me via email if you want any help or answers or any help whatsoever. I will be more than happy to help anybody in LDS publishing who wants to go in this direction.
Also, the shopping cart doesn’t have to be expensive.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:10 pm
Dude, cover your eyes, she’s buying more books!
July 7th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Dude knows whats up. lol