Monday, February 21, 2011

Mondays With Mike: Surrendering to the e-book revolution

OKAY, OKAY, OKAY … if you’ve been following the discussion here you know there has been a lot of talk about e-books. Last October I interviewed Jackie Vick about her e-book, The Grooms Cake, then my friend Robyn Gioia began her series on ending e-book snobbery, and that was followed by last week’s interview with Stephen Brayton about is two new e-books, Night Shadows and Beta. And during this whole e-book fascination I attended the annual Love Is Murder Mystery Conference in Chicago where much of the topic of discussion was the new e-book revolution.

Now add to that several readers who have chimed in about their e-book experiences. I have heard from readers – not writers – who swear by their e-book readers. Books are cheaper, they say; its more convenient to carry a Kindle than a bag of books on vacation, they claim; and my favorite: you can read a book while you eat since the reader lays flat or can be propped up against the gravy boat!

Okay, enough already. I’m going to take the plunge. I ordered a Kindle! Yup, just like that; I went to Amazon, ordered the Kindle 3G and just received the e-mail that it is on its way, and, for my reading enjoyment, it has already been registered to my Amazon account so I can order books immediately. In fact, I don’t even need to wait to get it; I can start ordering right now. It seems that Amazon has something called Amazon Whipernet that will auto-deliver anything I order now to my new Kindle.

Alright, it should come this week and as soon as I have a chance to check it out I report back on what I find. In the mean time, let me hear from you about you experiences with e-book readers and I’ll be back with another author interview next Monday.

By the way, if you are in the Central Iowa next week, I’ll be at the Ankeny Public Library 9:30 next Saturday (February 26) for a discussion on plot, outlining, and character development.

3 comments:

  1. Faithful Publishing just released Pale as the Moon (children's hisotrical fiction) as a Kindle e-book. It has been in print over 10 years and we thought this would give it some new life. Right away I reaped a benefit. A teacher bought the e-book, then ordered the hard copy for the school library, contacted me to do a school visit, and ordered print copies for all her students. So, I am happy to report our experiment seems to have worked.

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  2. Donna,

    I've heard the same thing from authors and publishers: e-books spur book sales.

    Mike

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  3. I got it and downloaded Stephen Brayton's Night Shadows ... so far so good!

    Mike

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