New thoughts about ebooks.

I'm feel like I'm getting a little distance from the excitement of getting published.

For one thing, I'm back to writing full time again.  I passed 50,000 words on The Dead Spend No Gold, and it was like I passed some barrier.  It's now just a matter of finishing.

Plus, I'm getting more of a sense of how this is all going to work.

What I've really not talked about is my feelings toward ebooks.

I make the joke in my store that as a retailer and reader, I hate ebooks.  As a writer, I love ebooks.

Which isn't strictly true.  For one thing, I've never been one who thought ebooks would be the end of traditional books.

Now that I'm an ebook writer (as well as traditional, more about that later) I'm not one of those who think that ebooks are the only answer for writers.

A little bit of both, I suppose.

My feeling is that traditional publishing -- instead of constricting in a panic, firing editors and reps and everyone else they could -- should have opened up.  Done even MORE books, both ebooks and traditional books, hired MORE editors and reps and promotional people and such, taken on MORE authors, and paid MORE.

In other words, they did the worse thing they could do.   They panicked.  They were so afraid of doing the same thing that the music business did, that they constricted and shifted, thereby in effect doing the same thing the music industry did -- just in a different way.

They should have embraced ebooks -- not grudgingly, out of fear, as they did -- but by bringing them fully into the fold.  It would have required investment, it would have required that they change the terms to give the writers more of the new money. 

I'm not sure I would have understood that either.  I was kind of old guard, even more old guard than the publishers, in that I would have ignored ebooks altogether.

I was wrong.

But what the publishers actually did was take the worst elements of both facets of publishing, instead of keeping what they had and then really opening the door to ebooks.  (Like I said, they should have hired more help, bought more books, and most importantly, given a bigger chunk to the authors.)

Now Amazon and Smashwords have more or less cornered the ebook market by giving a bigger share to the authors.  Believe me, if a traditional publisher offered most ebook writers a bigger share as well as distribution of physical books in bookstores, a lot of authors would jump at the opportunity.

I know in my store that the answer to falling sales is not to cut orders, but to buy more -- or more importantly -- find something that WILL sell, even if it requires more investment at a time when you can least afford it.  You have to think long-term, and have faith in your judgement.  You don't pull the rug out from under the stuff you already sell, you add new elements.  Let the store shift over time, in response to supply and demand.

But...well, the publishing industry is defensive and hypocritical and worst of all, greedy and elitist.

And they are going to pay the price.