Why are people posting articles on the decline of ebook sales? This article by Nathan Bransford doesn't really answer that question, but it does point out how faulty some of these articles are that claim ebook sales are slumping.
And
even though 2013 has seen a plateau, ebook sales are still up in comparison to paper
copies. The music industry came into the digital world of mp3 players kicking
and screaming, and I don't see the publishing industry doing anything
differently. Because the music industry's evolution was so incredibly recent,
you would think the publishing world would realize what's happening to their
books.
#
Interestingly,
hard copies of music (read CDs) still come out on top of the sales charts in
the music industry. Last year, 2012, CDs held the market share of music sales
at just over 35%, according to Digital
Music News. DMN’s Gif doesn’t take into account the increase in the overall
size of the music industry though; or the music industry’s 1999 decrease in
revenue; or the current plateau the music industry is predicted to have over
the next five years (PriceWaterhouse
Predicts Near-Zero Music Industy Growth Over the Next 5 Years, Digital Music
News).
Seems
like every time we had a new tech advance though, the music industry experienced
an uptick in sales. Just over a year ago in June 2012 ebooks outsold the
traditional hard copy paper book, and according to a 2010
survey people who owned a Kindle or Nook purchased more books than they would
have if they did not own an ereader. This was all about the time I also decided
to self-publish my Wasteland series,
when a couple years prior (2009-2010) I made fun of people who self-published.
But then came along authors such as Hugh
Howey of Wool fame, who brokered
an unprecedented print publishing deal
with Simon & Schuster. Thanks to literary agents contacting him—not the
other way around; not authors contacting agents, begging for representation—and
Kristin Nelson was not the first agent to have contacted Howey.
Howey
is not the only author to be contacted by Nelson. For example, have you heard of
Jasinda Wilder? Wilder has sold 70,000 ebook copies of new adult romance Falling Into You, and Nelson picked her
up sometime around April as a client. Wait and see: more literary agents such
as Nelson will emerge, picking up indie authors who have made big sales on their
own in the e-world.
The
e-reader world has become the new proving ground for authors. Soon, novels will
no longer be acquired by publishers or agents as they have in the past. The agent
query letter may indeed soon be dead, perhaps replaced by the author query letter.
Which
brings me back to music, and in the words of David Bowie, “The absolute
transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place
within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it” (excerpt from the
2002 New York Times article “David Bowie, 21st Century Entrepreneur”
by John Pareles). Music CDs certainly haven’t disappeared from the marketplace,
but the way we discover our new pop idols has radically shifted. Think about
Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Park Jae-sang—a.ka. Psy.
Eventually,
the music industry embraced the new paradigm, but why hasn’t the publishing
world embraced the emerging new paradigm of empowered artists/authors? Why are
they running so scared they have to publish pieces concerning the fictional decline
of ebook sales?
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WASTELAND: THE END OF WINTER
“I thought this book was beautiful. Having just finished it, I feel like I have just woken up from a really disturbing dream” – Rose Actor-engel, Amazon
Christine and Jack sat on the back deck of their cottage and watched the stars fall into the lake. They whispered to each other, "Beautiful." But Jack did not know his life was to forever change. A plague came. Christine died. Aliens landed and they put things in his food and soap. The sidewalks lit up blue to let him know when he was allowed to go to the store. Filled with drugs, sex, and cigarettes, the first of six inter-related short stories that make up the entirety of the Wasteland series all styled after Winesburg, Ohio and As I Lay Dying. Based loosely off T.S. Elliot's poem of the same name, The Wasteland is told from the perspectives of the people living inside Jack's head.
Would you like your book featured here? For free? Email me!
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