Why E-Books?

By

Anastasia Rabiyah

(published author)

 

With the growing popularity of this new way to disseminate information and stories to get lost in, I thought I’d write up a little article about e-books to let those that have never heard of them, hop on the information train. Could it be that I’m biased? I do edit for three small, e-book publishers. I have books available as downloads that I authored and more to come, but the real reason I want others to know and understand what e-books are might surprise you.

The last time you went to the bookstore, that’s right, the big Barnes and Noble and poked around, did you see anyone new? Were there budding authors with a twist on fiction jumping from the aisles to catch your eyes? The answer is probably not. You might wonder why that is, or you might be happy with all the stand-by, tested and true authors available to you, snatch up one of their titles and amble to the coffee section to sip and get lost in another world. If so, stop reading now.

If you do wonder why, it’s simple. Tested, published, blockbuster-selling authors have the brand name! They’re a sure thing. At this point in their career, they’ve built a following. Any tale they pen will have an automatic readership. Sure, they can write something really bad, but it’ll take the general public a while to catch on.

So, why e-books? What the heck are they? What makes them so special? Let me tell you. An e-book is a book, generally in PDF format, that you can download and read on your computer. Oh and there’s a new gadget out there, a hand held e-book reader. You can carry it around with you and read it anywhere, just like a print book. Imagine the possibilities. Gargantuan college textbooks, manuals for businesses, policies & procedures, Gone With the Wind and even the Holy Bible all reduced to a dust-free, paperless file on your computer.

   For those of you book lovers out there, let’s ask a question. Be honest. No lies. Do you have shelves of well-loved books in your house that collect dust, look rather fantastic—like a medieval library, in myriad colors, shapes and sizes all of which you only ever read once? Well, I do. I know I can’t possibly be the only one. Can you think of anything else you’d like to do with that space? Did you ever wonder how many trees it took to generate the paper to create those books?

E-books don’t collect dust. They’re available at the touch of a button. You can read them once and because generally, they cost less than a print book to both produce and purchase (remember no dead trees involved) you’ll pay less and have less guilt because they’re not there on the shelf staring at you. Now you can put up all those pictures of Aunt Ruth you’ve stored in boxes under the bed.

Here’s the other benefit. E-books allow publishers to contract authors that they might not normally take. Is this good or bad? Well, like anything new and exciting, it’s a little bit of both. It gives new writers a chance, a way to be heard, a place to be seen. The cost is low. In order to promote a print book, a publisher has to invest $10,000 or more printing and distributing books to stores hoping they’ll sell. If the book flops, what a waste that was. Not so in the e-book industry. No paper books get created, no boxes of dead trees get shipped out. The production cost is so low that e-publishers can afford to put new poets in print, new fantasy authors, new mainstream writers, the list goes on.

If an e-book flops, at least no trees died. With the growing popularity of e-reviews and e-review sites by people that have read the e-books, you can generally avoid the scary ones. There’s a blurb and often an excerpt to test out before you buy. What if you want to buy something you’re too embarrassed to purchase in the store? What if you want it RIGHT NOW? E-books I say. No shipping and handling charge, no waiting days to get a package, no trip to the big book store to get those awkward stares because you’re purchasing erotica or a how-to on crossbreeding chickens.

 Both the failing and the success of a market economy is that only the strongest survive. Just like Wal-Mart beats out all those small mom and pop stores and in the end forces them into antiquity by giving us a deal on what we want at a lower price, large publishing houses are inadvertently forcing out new authors or the unusual or untried simply because it doesn’t make dollar sense to promo someone that is unknown. I can’t blame them. Business is there to make money, not gamble it away. As for the e-publishers, sure they are too, but there’s a market for just about anything and e-books can deliver without going under. They can afford to make the not-so-traditional available to the masses.

If you didn’t know e-books were out there, now you do. Hop on the web and do a search for something unusual. Try a new author or find one of your favorites and give an e-book a shot. Save trees. Find a new niche’. Break away from the norm, the tried and true. It just might be the wave of the reading future.