Monday, March 19, 2012

Monday Mentionables: Considering Digital-Only Publishers

Did you have a jolly St. Patrick's Day Weekend? I'll admit, I'm not Irish and I'm not one of those people who takes advantage of the holiday to go out and get rip-roaring drunk - though I did take advantage of the weekend without schoolwork to get some writing done. I'm about 18K words through my current novella, Sex on the Beach, with a goal of 30K and to be finished by the end of the month.

I've also been mulling over the pros and cons of submitting to publishers that are "digital only" - meaning no matter how long your book is, they will only format it to be sold in ebook (some publishers still put full-length novels, those over 60K or so, into print). I have mixed feelings about this, to be honest. Certainly, the ebook market is growing hugely, and almost everywhere you go, you see people with e-readers and iPads. Authors make more royalties on ebooks than they do on print books, and the number of brick-and-mortar bookstores seems to be dwindling on a daily basis. My digital sales have been higher than my print sales for every title I have.

At the same time, I know I have some readers who still want to read and buy print books. hey probably won't ever read a title if it's only available as a digital file. So will I lose those readers if I publish with a company who will never put my books into print? And , is that a big enough piece of my audience to affect my decision? It's tough to say....

Any thoughts?

1 comment:

Liz said...

I think with the unfortunate closing of Borders and the announcement Dorchester Publishing has closed its doors I think its inevitable.