E-books Here to Stay

Just about everybody I know is reading Hunger Games. Have you read it?

On my friend Kelley's 40th birthday, she sent an e-book copy to my Kindle. I'm saving it for Sunday, when I expect to spend a lazy day avoiding all thought of my dissertation. Don't you love that? It's her birthday, so I get a gift!?

Publishers Weekly's pick of the week was Anne Tyler's The Beginner's Goodbye. The description looks interesting. This week's issue also devoted lots of space to The Age of Miracles, a story about an 11-year-old girl who wakes up one day and realizes the earth's rotation has started slowing. The book is the author's debut novel, so look for more from Karen Thompson Walker. Must. wait. till. my. graduation.

But while I get to do little of my own reading these days, life as an author isn't altogether bad, thanks in part to e-books. All my novels are now available in both print and ebook formats, so I'm seeing activity on a couple of once-comatose titles now brought back to life. Apparently 17% of book buyers bought an e-book last December, up from 9% the previous year. And fiction by a big margin most of the e-book buyers' attention. While e-books accounted for only 15% of non-fiction sales, they made up a whopping 26% of adult fiction sales in the third quarter. I feel confident print will remain with us for a long, long time, but e-books have also certainly settled in to grab a solid share of the market.  Still, as Publishers Weekly reports, "every book is a bet. Most advances don't earn out and most books sell fewer than 1,000 copies." So hopefully e-books will cut down on the production-related losses and add to the bottom line.