Post-publication Updates:
thought it might be interesting to provide an update on
how well I predicted the future of electronic publishing. While eBooks still claim only a miniscule
market share, they certainly have not faded away. Perhaps the most on-target statement in the
entire article is Larry Brewster’s comment that eBooks would not replace printed
books, but instead would complement them. An example of this is perhaps best
illustrated by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci
Code, one of the most successful and widely-read books of all time. The
eBook version of this book is readily available at Amazon.com and other online
bookstores. Certainly, if there was no
economically attractive market for such a huge bestseller, there would be no
need to publish the book in digital format. No one dreamed of foregoing the
printed version, but Random House\Doubleday must have had a pretty decent
incentive to offer the eBook, wouldn’t you think? A quick check also found six
of Michael Crichton’s bestsellers available as eBooks.
A national segmentation study jointly conducted at the end
of 2004 by the Washington Post,
Frankly, I can’t really imaging subscribing to a printed newspaper, anymore, when I can so easily find local, national and international news on the Internet.
2009 Update: To be fair, eBooks have not come even close to hitting the more bullish sales forecasts predicted by some companies like Adobe. Yet, even such vendors as Adobe (ref: Bill McCoy, August 19, 2005) retain an optimistic view that the boom is yet to arrive. The main missing ingredient to date is an eBook reader that hits the market with a similar force as did Apple’s music iPod. Most of the e-Ink companies that have the capability to produce an ultra-light device that can be held comfortably between thumb and forefinger and that would page forward or back one or multiple pages with a touch motion similar to the iPod are still in the R&D stages. The introduction of the "Kindle," reveals that the demand for eBooks remais quite active. The summer 2009 World eBook Fair advertised over two million eBook titles as downlaoded. Apple says it has 30,000 popular titles abavailbales as eBooks for the iPood & iPhone. A report in Forbes magazine indicates that Stanza, a free eBook reader application for the iPhone and iPod Touch has already been downloaded over 395,000 times, and is getting 5,000 downloads per day. Admittedly, best-selling author J.K. Rowling says there will no eBook version of the Harry Potter series, but a quick search on the Internet reveals an abundanec of best-sellers who had no problem with an eBook version.
The Kindle sales page notes that there are, “More than 180,000 books available, including more than 98 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers.”
Nine years after my relatively unknown Print-on-Demand novel was published, I would definitely use that publishing method or eBook approach, again, rather than hold out on the slim hope that a traditional publisher might some day become interested in the manuscript. I definitely did not get rich off my novel, but I did earn enough in royalties to feel quite good about how I fared in such a competitive market, and I immensely enjoyed the experience of being published and reviewed, selling out at a majority of my book-signings. I still enjoy being introduced as a published author or novelist.
- Michael Marcotte,
5/16/2006
March 2007 update: Received a royalties check for 2006 sales of my Print-on-demand novel. Although
sales have definitely dropped off at seven years past publication, and with Amazon.com now
offering mulitiple "used" copies of my book, it is very enjoyable to still receive a check
in the mail for something I created over seven years ago, which never received any consideration
from any of the more traditional publishers.
January 2008 update: Another royalties check, for 2007 sales of my PoD book. That's eight years in a row.