I Did It My Way

"Brick and mortar" bookstores have been a recent phenomenon. I remember going to “Mom and Pop” book stores to purchase novels. The shift was pretty significant when B&N came on the scene, followed by Borders. You can see how it changed our culture in You've Got Mail so eloquently (BTW, if you haven't seen that movie, get up off of that thang and see it!). Books became hip along with signature coffee. And boy do I love my Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Although these bookstores seems to have been an institution for quite some time, I remember when it wasn't and going to the library was the best way to get a lot of good books.

Now we have ebooks.

As demand grows for more and more devices for portability so has the demand for ebooks increased exponentially. The devices make it possible to carry an entire library of books in your purse. AND you can change the font size to suit your reading comfort. AND you can buy excellent novels for a fraction of the price you’d pay for a physical book. It has revolutionized the way we read everything, enough that this time it is a paradigm shift. The reason being now authors can sell their books directly to customers without the middleman. That means higher revenue for the author, but that isn’t simply because of the rate of return. That has more to do with the fact ebooks NEVER become out-of-print.

Real estate at “brick and mortar” bookstores is limited, but not so at retailers like Amazon, Smashwords and even B&N.com (through PubIt). As an author’s book list grows, so does his exposure. The more books out in publication, the greater the exposure. That’s not to say one should publish a million novels. Quality is still going to win over quantity, and that’s the truth. What makes this a perfect opportunity for an up and coming author like me is I can establish my own career free of the gatekeepers who have controlled the market for so long, allowing you, the customer, open access to any type of novel you wish to buy. We now have a freer market to publish and read literature than we ever have before. And that’s good for everybody.