Taking a Risk

 Poised on the cliff edge about to take the leap!

No thoughts of suicide - oh no!

Or perhaps only in terms of covers for my e-books. I am about to change three of them.

And I'm changing them to something quite different. to what has gone before. Because I do them myself, I can chop and change as I like  and at no cost to me except in time. And perhaps frustration! Photoshop is not the easiest thing in the world to use.

With earlier attempts at covers I tried to be truthful to the period of the story, and accurate in terms of dress and hair style. Now I am venturing into a more romantic look for my covers. Accuracy will have to take a back seat for a while was I conduct this experiment. If the new covers sell better than the old ones, then a point will have been proved  - to me, at least. 

I am aware that criticism comes from cover artists  but I think have a different POV. This is their business, their profession and they will look for errors in style and execution, of course they will. I would too, in their place. 

But I enjoy doing covers. It gives me hours of pleasure trying things out and lately people have begun sending "Likes "and pleasant comments as the new covers appear. Now if only those comments would turn into sales I should be delighted!

Are e-books priced too high?

David Naggar, Amazon’s publishing chief, says a price of 99p sells more books.

Self-published authors  regularly sell  their work on Amazon for 99p  

Faced with two book by unknown authors which cost £9.99 and £2.99 respectively, which do you think most people would pick? 

Trad publishers find this "economically unwise"  because their business models are quite different. Indie authors sell at 99p via the Kindle platform and earn a royalty of between 35-70% of the retail price. Trad published authors earn 25% on e-books. 

Amazon has around 90% share of the ebook market in the UK according to the Publishers Association and according to them sales of trade ebooks fell by 17% in 2016 to £204 million.

One publisher (Alessandro Gallenzi) argues that nurturing authors requires a long term investment and cheap prices damage authors by devaluing and homogenising their work.

Matthew Lynn is the CEO of Endeavour Press and thinks that the market dictates the price, that e books are overpriced and £1.99 is a better price than 99p - though it does depend on genre.

"Digital and print books serve different audiences," he says..."cheaper ebooks are enhancing sales."

Evidently an Amazon spokes person has said that Naggar's comments had been intended to illustrate and example of KDP tactics to drive discovery for new authors. 

September 4, 2017 by Natasha Onwuemezi and Katherine Cowdrey

E-book claims

The Publishing Association show that sales of consumer ebooks have dropped by 17%, while sales of physical books are up 8%. Consumer spending on books was up £89m across the board last year, compared with 2015. 

Paula Cocozza wrote a fairly long article about this back in April 2017 asking So why is the physical book winning through? I read it with interest and then found this statement:

The figures from the Publishing Association should be treated with some caution. They exclude self-published books, a sizable market for ebooks. And, according to Dan Franklin, a digital publishing specialist, more than 50% of genre sales are on ebook. Digital book sales overall are up 6%.

I looked back at th earlier figure: ebooks have dropped by 17%  and wondered how to match the two statements in my mind.

“It’s not about the death of ebooks,” Daunt says. (James Daunt of Waterstone) “It’s about ebooks finding their natural level. Even in the years when ebook sales were rising greatly – and clearly cannibalising physical book sales – it was always very clear that we would have a correction and reach an equilibrium.” The UK, he says, has “adopted” ebooks and they will remain a substantial market (while in France, for instance, ebooks are only 3% of the overall market). The last thing he – or any seller or publisher of physical books – wants is the death of the ebook. “We want people to read. We don’t mind how they read,” he stresses. He knows that people who read, sooner or later, will buy books.

If you want to read the whole thing, here's the link: 
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/27/how-ebooks-lost-their-shine-kindles-look-clunky-unhip-

Perhaps you'll be able to explain to me how those two claims match together.

Dabbling in the market

This week, on the 6th to be precise, I lowered the prices on each of my e-books in order to discover if prices had any impact on the lack of sales recently. Out in Facebook land there is a theory that  the cheaper the e-book, the less respect it deserves. I read this so many times from so many different people that I resolved to raise my prices as I was not writing the equivalent of Kiss me Quick stories that would be forgotten two days after closing the book - metaphorically speaking, of course.

My raised prices and subsequent falling sales resulted or coincided with the national decision to vote for leaving the EU, so Brexit had to be to blame. It had frightened everyone into  scrupulous saving, hadn't it? I had no idea, because I had not noted the dated when I raised prices and I didn't do it on all my books at the same time. Scientific about it I was not.

Meanwhile, the KENP pages read continued to do well in the USA, particularly for The Gybford Affair. The UK doesn't produce the same results. Perhaps paying a monthly subscription for as many books as you can read hasn't caught on  in the UK. Or maybe UK readers don't like my books. Who knows?

So this time I decided to take note of what I was doing. On 6th February I lowered  my prices and waited the 72 hours for the changes to kick in. This morning I checked my figures and there were sales in the USA. Not a huge amount yet, and only one in the UK, but it is a start. Now it will be interesting to see how the  rest of the month goes.

I had priced one or two of the more recent e-books at $3.50, and the lowest at £1.99. Now the lowest is $0.99 and the highest $1.99 and I'll be watching to see what happens from now on.

The picture? Oh that is the real Matfen Hall in the Tyne Valley. In my latest story I have a vague outline of it in my mind when I describe Matfen Grange, where Leigh Fenwick has her adventures.

Books and Spikes

If you want a detailed report on how UK publishers are doing, then check out "Review of 2014" by Philip Jones in the Bookseller 20 January, 2015.

Here's a swift gloss -

"e-book sales outpaced print sales during the year."

Domestic e-book sales for Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Pan Macmillan totalled 49m units in 2014, a 15.3% rise on 2013. There was an 18% rise in 2012, and a huge 105% gain in 2012 (on 2011).

There are and probably always will be, spikes. The e-book market rate of growth was exaggerated in 2012 by the Fifty Shades trilogy, Spikes like this can play havoc with a companies figures, skew general trends and drive analysts crazy.

Independently published titles are growing, but no one has a way of tracking the rate of growth.

HarperCollins UK chief executive Charlie Redmayne says the traditional Christmas sales spike has "all but" disappeared. Waterstones m.d. James Daunt said virtually the same thing two weeks ago.

The other thing of interest is what everyone is calling the "print renaissance." The book trade has "rekindled its love affair with the physical book." 

Has digital helped revive and reinvent print?

The shift to tablet reading and the rise of subscription services, will likely change the narrative again. As Kindle's Russ Grandinetti suggested at Digital Book World last week, nothing is stable. Let's hope the book business is doing better than we all thought.

Real Books survive

Articles are starting to appear saying that readers are remaining loyal to real books. Bookshops in the UK, US and Australia are claiming rising sales figures. Waterstones in the UK claims a 5% rise in December against the previous year. Foyles reported an 8% rise. Barnes & Noble report a 5% rise in shares.

Physical books sold in the US rose  2.4% in 2014. In the UK real book sales fell by 1.3% but that is better than the 6.5% fall in 2013.

Deloitte are said to estimate 80% of book sales will be real books in 2015.

Ebook sales have slowed and fewer e-readers were bought at Christmas.

 

The growth area is young adult fiction. Teenagers prefer real books, maybe because they can read and share with friends. Also, many don't have credit cards for online buying.

The increase in sales of real books may be small, but at least it is travelling in the right direction. E-books seem to have stalled saleswise, though self-publishing is still increasing and that no doubt accounts for Twitter being filled with adverts for books to the point that I'm thinking of hunting for people not involved in writing just to get some sort of decent content.

Battle lines

Kindle Unlimited (KU) attracted negative press coverage 

as indie authors saw what was happening to their sales. The general bad feeling floating around on the internet since Kindle Unlimited’s launch finally made it to the front page of the New York Times last Sunday“If you’re not an author with a slavish fan following, you’re in a lot of trouble” according to self-published author Bob Mayer “Everyone already has a ton of things on their Kindle they haven’t opened".

“What is now being proven is that market is not infinitely elastic,” publishing industry consultant Mike Shatzkin wrote on his blog on New Year’s Eve. “It seems likely that the low-priced indie authors are disproportionately affected by KU. Who bought indie author ebooks in the first place? The price-sensitive reader! Who switches from buying individual ebooks to the subscription service first? The price-sensitive reader! In other words, the subscription service offering appeals most to the same audience as those who read indie-published ebooks.”

Meanwhile, Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader wondered whether ebook subscription services are only a problem for indie authors or whether they will be a problem for traditional publishers as well. Of course, one of the main reasons that publishers feared ebook subscriptions in the first place was that they worried such services would cannibalize individual paid sales.  

Like all the other self-published authors, I noticed my sales were dwindling and there were few KU payments to compensate. So I unchecked the box that allows my titles to be read by Kindle Unlimited subscribers, only to find that it will take 90 days to become effective. And, of course, I was only 4 days into the next 90 days period, so I can look forward to poor sales until March. 

If Amazon continues to favour the reader over the author, one wonders what will happen down the line. Authors will no doubt pull out of Amazon altogether. There are other places to self-publish. As long as readers seek the cheapest form of reading, they will continue to use Amazon - until the stock available becomes so mediocre they too will go elsewhere.



 

VAT ALERT!

Usually I find out about new legislation far too late to do anything about it, but this time, thanks to Facebook, I'm up there with the news! There is a fiendish plan afoot to place VAT on digital products - yes, that will mean e-books!

New EU VAT regulations come into force in Jan 2015.

Micro-businesses selling Ebooks direct to customers will forfeit their VAT exemption threshold by doing digital business in Europe.

"From 1 Jan 2015, the new ruling means that should you make a sale to the EU (how one can prevent that with online services is not clear) from the first £1 of revenue your business earns you will need to be VAT registered in the UK and under the VAT MOSS Europe-wide scheme – meaning that you will immediately have to apply VAT to all your services, including those in the UK.

Furthermore, this this means a quarterly obligation to submit VAT returns, increasing the accounting burden significantly; as well as, the cost and complexity involved with meeting the letter of the law regarding the capture and retention of evidence of its customers’ location will bring (which needs to be retained for 10 years)."

In 3 years I have sold less than a dozen books to readers in Europe.

I don't know how I can stop them buying, and I certainly don't want VAT on my other sales in the UK.

Click on the link and sign to petition against it -
https://www.change.org/p/vince-cable-mp-uphold-the-vat-exemption-threshold-for-businesses-supplying-digital-products

What kind of audience do you want?

Richard Lea wrote an article in the Guardian way back in January - and I've just caught up with it! This, for me, is one of the many ways that the internet is Good. Google a topic, and up come many links. How much easier kids must find schoolwork these days! Naturally, I was interested in self-publishing. Books in general, of course, and where  the trends are heading  now. For most of us, the news is not good.

A post or two back I shared a survey that claimed  54% of traditionally-published authors make less than £600 a year. The Society of Authors found in 2000 that 75% of members earned less than £20,000, while in 2007 the Authors' Licence and Collecting Society cited average earnings for UK authors of about £16,000, an average which hides the true picture of a profession which is becoming steadily more unequal. The amount of money earned by the mid-list author dropped from £6,000 in 2000 to just £4,000 in 2004-05.

Self-publishing looked bleaker still, with 80% of the  go-it-alone authors in the recent survey dipping under the £600 mark. But nowadays it is easy to find an audience for your work via electronic means. Write it and put it on your website, or Scribophile, Wattpad or WritersCafe and see what results you get.

Scribophile -  "We're a writing group that works on a karma point system. Members spend karma points to post their writing for feedback from the community. To earn karma points, members submit thoughtful critiques for the work of others. Everyone has to earn karma points before they can post! This system ensures that every work you post gets awesome critiques from other talented writers. Forget about sites that are popularity contests, get spammed with work that sits unviewed, and "reviews" that say nothing but "good job." At our writing group every piece gets the full critiquing attention it deserves. Don't feel like critiquing? That's OK! Hang out in our busy writing forums to chat with other passionate writers, read our writing blog for tips and tricks, and meet and connect with writers from all over the world."

WritersCafe - "WritersCafe.org is an online writing community where writers can post their work, get reviews, befriend other writers, and much more.."

Wattpad - "the world's largest community of readers and writers - 25 million of them."

Indie wars and statistics

The BBC published a lengthy article last autumn on current publishing in the UK, with some comparison statistics showing US and UK differences. Figures vary - as statistics always do! - depending who is writing, what the angle is and which figures they decide to quote. But the general trend is always the same - e-books are expanding their market share. The graphics are clear.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23682885

There's also a wonderful argument going on at :
http://goodereader.com/blog/commentary/self-publishers-should-not-be-called-authors?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=self-publishers-should-not-be-called-authors

Basically there are several groups in the US who think there is, and should be, a distinction between self-published authors and traditionally-published authors. In order to join such organisations, you have to earn say, $1,000 over a calendar year.

"The Published Authors Network has strict requirements on who can join their organization. You have to earn $1,000 in the form of an advance on a single Eligible Novel. Or you have to earn $1,000 in the form of royalties or a combination of advance plus royalties on a single published Eligible Novel. Finally, you have to pull in $5,000 in the form of earnings for a Self-Published novel."

The "author" of the article goes on at length, and the comments section that follows is a hoot. But seriously, if this goes through, UK authors are going to struggle to gain a foothold in the US. Our much smaller market place makes it very difficult to earn such an amount in such a time. With a new book from an unknown author, it strikes me as virtually impossible. 

The Digital Revolution

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10732764/The-ebook-revolution-hasnt-even-begun.html

An article by Gaby Wood begins with the statement that Sir Tim Waterstone, who once owned a chain of bookshops, thinks ebooks will go into decline. They've suffered a decline in the USA, and so he thinks it inevitable that the UK will follow a similar trend.

At a guess, booksellers probably dream wistfully of the digital book's demise. But what about the other groups who have a more than passing interest? I don't think any of the other three  - Writers, Publishers or Readers - would want such a thing.

 Ms Wood thinks it depends on whether ebooks give us what we want. "Do they inspire us, and open our minds to new ways of thinking, as they certainly could? For the most part, no. Early on in the life of the Kindle, digital versions of commercial fiction replaced sales of paperbacks, and publishers had to adapt quickly. As a result, they now tend to think of digital books and printed books as different versions of the same thing. If they really saw the possibilities of the ebook and the virtues of the printed book for what they are, publishers would know the two forms are only very vaguely related."

I agree she has a point. But do I want gimmicky  enhancements locked into a book I'm reading? Call me an old throwback, but no, I certainly do not. For me a book is something with which I commune in silence and as I read, the characters live and breathe in my imagination. I don't want my interpretation of a character to be totalled because the publisher decided some Hollywood or Pop culture icon should speed onto the screen every time the hero is mentioned. I want to visualise my own hero, thank you very much.

People under 25 may clamour for such enhancements. If they do, I shall fear that their imaginations have atrophied under the barrage of  tv, film and media games, if not under the barrage of sound they receive these days. I'm surprised cinemas don't crumble away under the almost constant rumble of what I call "ultrasound" - that low rumble that accompanies every key moment, or the sudden bombardment that presages a moment of high drama. It's enough to make you think the Fire Drummers of Japan have got locked in the cinema basement. It's on so many tvs now, so there's no escape. Go upstairs to get some peace and you can still hear the ultrasound reverberating through the house even thought the dialogue is silent.

Ms Wood claims "There is so much material – visual, historical, musical, vocal – that can bring a text to life digitally," and I shudder to think what she has in mind. Her closing sentence is worrying -
"Thinking of ebooks and printed books as comparable is like assuming that anything conveyed by means of the written word is a poem.... Publishers have got to stop thinking of their digital products as “books”, and start imagining more expansive ways of communicating information. Until then, the digital revolution hasn’t even begun." 

The best selling e-books of 2012

Publishers Weekly has an interesting article - OK, it came out mid 2013, and it's already 2014, so you may have seen it. But I've just found it and I want to keep it ot at least the link to it. I may want to look back at it some day. And there is a certain curiosity in knowing how many titles authors sold....

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/56408-the-e-book-explosion-facts-figures-2012.html

The magazine asked publishers for information on e-book sales. Because they were not specific enough in their questions, they got more info than they bargained for, but when they looked at it, they found lots of  interest. Here's a little quote:

"All the publishers that shared digital information were houses that rack up enough print sales to compete in the bestseller race. And while we estimate that we have more than 1,000 e-books with sales of 25,000+, we know this does not reflect all e-book sales in the book industry. Still, a look at this quantity underscores that the book business is quickly moving to digital. It would be safe to say that the lackluster performance in mass market has a lot to do with the fact that readers are enjoying the convenience of the electronic devices instead of the more traditional convenience of the paperback.

Also, it is clear where backlist sales have gone. Peruse the list and you will see double-digit numbers of titles for most of the bestselling veterans. Nora Roberts may be the most prolific in this area: she has 40 titles on the e-book list, adding up to about 3.2 million in total e-sales; James Patterson has 29 books on the list, with a total of more than 2.6 million; Janet Evanovich scores close to 1.8 million with 19 books."

One phrase leapt out at me: the book business is quickly moving to digital. 

In view of this change in the business, which after a slow, tepid start now seems to be gathering speed like the proverbial stone rolling downhill, I am now seriously thinking about publishing Matho's story myself. I can do it. No worries on that score. I can - indeed, already have, a cover that I think is good enough to be THE cover. The big worry is promotion. The stumbling block to self-publishing is getting the information out there. While I tinker about with yet another edit of the story, and finish off my Viking tale, I shall be exploring better ways of promotion. 

e-books and reading

There is a theory that simple, linear narratives are suited to e-readers. Complex literary fiction is inherently unsuited to the e-reader but far more suited to the armchair and a cup of coffee – or glass of whisky. (Select your own beverage.)

How do you use your e-reader? I still read paper books from choice, but if I don’t have one to hand, then I turn to the e-reader. My Kindle comes into its own when I’m on holiday, no matter the length of time, for the simple reason it is small, neat and takes up little space. Day to day journeys by bus are rare for me, but when I do catch the bus, I see people avidly reading as they make their way into the city. If they travel every day, perhaps twice a day going to work, then I can see that a Kindle would be a boon. The journey takes 50 minutes, and that’s a good chunk of reading time, but I don’t think I’d want to tackle something terribly complex.

Instead I’d rather have something clear, fast-paced and attention grabbing so I don’t earwig on other people’s conversations or get distracted by the cyclist wobbling along beside the bus.  The Kindle will be jiggling about a bit, so I want clear script that easy on the eye, simple page turning and a progressive story. I don’t want to have to stop and wonder about the sentence I’ve just read and I’m hardly likely to ponder the beauty of the prose among 30 other coughing, sniffing, laughing, chattering travellers.

 

I begin to see that many stories are designed with an e-reader in mind. Short sentences, fast narrative, simple language – these stories won’t ever be published in the old fashioned sense, but boy are they selling on the e-book scene.  Let’s hope that the two remain distinct forms of reading. I’d hate for all reading to merge into one simple mass.

Time for Amazon to pay

Pennines in snow

E-book sellers Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & Noble are located in Luxembourg.  In January 2012 France and Luxembourg dropped VAT rates on e-books to 3% so that the tax charged on both printed and digital books would be equal. That might seem fine, but in the UK, the tax on e-books is 20%. Infringement of the VAT rules on e-books distorts the single market and runs counter to the fundamental EU principle of fair tax competition.

Objections were put forward last October but there have beent no changes in the situation. Several Ministers and representatives of both paper and electronic publishing industries have voiced concerns over the negative effect on sales in their domestic markets, and so the EC has referred the matter to the EU Court of Justice.

It is interesting to know that Amazon requires UK publishers to pay most of the 20% VAT charge on e-book sales even though Amazon pays only 3% in Luxembourg.  It is not clear if Amazon passes on such gains to its customers. In going digital, Amazon has avoided the effects of piracy that so harassed the music industry and has no hesitation in admitting that, with all its massive clout, the company seeks the most advantageous arrangements, and is doing nothing illegal (apart from undercutting tax laws. Surely that is illegal?)

Their goal, they say, is to make it easy for readers  to obtain the books they love…and to offer greater access to those books. Well, that's fine for readers, and for Amazon. I suppose it is also great for authors. It is not so great, in fact it is hugely detrimental to UK publishers. It is common knowledge by now that though Amazon generated sales of £3.3billion via its UK website in 2012, it paid zero corporation tax to the UK on profits from that income. Over the last three years, sales have raked in more than £7.6 billion - but no corporation tax has ever been paid on profits.

All I can say is, Remember Starbucks, Amazon, and cough up.
If anyone wants to read a longer article on the subject, here's what the Guardian had to say last October: Pay up
 

 

One more gripe

The newspapers are saying that E-books are skewing the book ratings. It seems that because digital sales are known only to Amazon and its equivalents, we have little idea what the UK is reading. This, they say, makes it difficult for publishers and agents to assess the market accurately, and doubly difficult to invest in the future. How can they tell what is the coming trend, except by having complete sales figures?

Amazon declines to share its sales figures. It has released a list of the top ten British e-book best-sellers, but keeps the figures to itself. Genre fiction – thrillers, romance – are selling well thanks to e-books, and they say that people buy three times the titles they once did now they have an electronic reader. I know I do.

The US and the EU may decide to break up the system whereby publishers set the price at which electronic books are sold, thus keeping the price high. Since the NBA on print books was abolished decades ago, that seems only fair to me, even though I was against the NBA when it came in.

2011 saw a 500 per cent increase in e-book sales, and a similar increase is expected this year. (I guess Amazon must have released the numbers for last year, but perhaps only totals?) There is an interesting rumour that women’s commercial fiction now has a male readership because of the anonymity of e-books. I never hesitated to read whatever I wanted to read – ah, but I have to admit I drew the line at reading category romances in public! Those covers! But that too is probably irrelevant now. I can read whatever I want on my Kindle, in public or out of it, and the only person who will know is me.

E-book sales rising

Here in the UK we bought almost two and a half million fewer books than in the opening weeks of 2011. Incude non-fiction and childrens's books and the total number of books sold in the UK fell by 4.7 million to 25 million over the same eight week period, according to Nielsen BookScan. We are talking printed books, of course.

Almost 1.4 million e-readers were sold in the UK over Christmas, double the amount sold the year before, and e-books sales are soaring by as much as 623 per cent between January and June last year.

It seems the writing is on the wall for the independant bookseller, and the bigger chains may well be worried. I've rarely patronised an independant, not as a conscious decision, but because I live in an area that is well supplied with bookshops of the larger variety, yet I'm always sorry when one goes out of business. I don't try and square that with preferring to buy a book as cheaply as possible. Getting a good read for less will always appeal. It's the way I am, the way most of society is these days, if we're honest. And not many of us can afford to buy as many books as we'd like these days. Twelve and thirteen pounds for a paperback seems way off the mark to me. What we need is another man like the one who set up the first Penguin paperbacks - a good read, but a cheap read.

Get a grip

For a brief moment this morning I sat down at my computer and wished I was back at work. At least it puts a structure on the day, enforces it even, and today seems to be one of those shilly-shally days when I'm not going to settle to doing anything much. It might be the weather. Yes, let's blame the weather. After a cold, bright weekend with sunshine all day Sunday that enticed us out, we drove over to Wallington and walked the riverside walk, which was lovely. Today, though the temperature is due to go up from -4 to 8, it is grey, damp, and miserable. I'd prefer yesterday, please.

I don't really want to be back at work. I have far too much to do without that. Maybe a cup of coffee will perk me up a bit, spark the old grey cells into action.  I tell myself I'm really lucky that dh just made me a cup of fruit tea. It's days like this that I lose hope of ever securing an agent and Twitter seems full of comments denouncing e-books as rubbish. But really, it's like printed books - there's a range, in every genre, from the very good down through  Ok to the downright boring - and to be fair, I must admit there is a segment of the e-book world that most would claim should never have seen the light of day. That, naturally, is what the nitpickers focus on. But they forget that agents and publishers have selected and printed books that simply bombed. we simply don't talk about them. I worked in libraries, and know which authors sat unloved on the shelves, and I'm sure booksellers know which titles never went through the tills.

There are faint noises to suggest that even the so-called rubbish might have a readership. For some time we've had reports of growing struggles with reading among the younger generation in the US and probably other countries as well. If those with reading difficulties read the so-called rubbish, then surely that's better than reading nothing? For those brought up in the visual age - tv, film, etc - then they could entertain themselves without bothering overmuch with reading. The habit never caught on. With the idea of reading on a phone, tablet, ipad, reader or Kindle it seems they might just find their way in, and if they want to read the simpler, wilder end of the market, then let's not get snobbish about it.

E-books

The latest news from America is that ebook sales in February totalled $90.3m or £55.2m. This makes digital books the largest single format in the US for the first time, overtaking paperbacks at $81.2m. In January, ebooks were the second-largest category, behind paperbacks. America's ebooks enjoyed a 202.3% growth in sales in February compared with the same month the previous year. Print books fared much worse. The growth in February was attributed to post-holiday ebook buying from readers given e-reader devices for Christmas. The greater selection of devices and the broader range of ebooks now available also played a part in the increase. Publishing houses cite ebooks as generating fresh interest in 'backlist' titles, books that have been in print for at least a year. E-book readers who enjoy a newly-released book will frequently buy an author's full backlist. Philip Jones, deputy editor of the Bookseller, called the US ebook sales growth a "significant milestone amongst digital milestones which are coming thick and fast", but pointed out that "the ebook figure includes children's, so overall the trade print book market is still bigger than the ebook market". "Ebooks have grown massively, but they do not yet match overall print books and nor is it predicted that they will," said Jones. "The most bullish predictions suggest that ebooks will account for 50% of the US market by 2014 or 2015, and then will probably plateau." In the UK, "we are one year behind now and catching up quite fast", said Jones. He pointed to small UK press Quercus, which publishes the Stieg Larsson trilogy and which announced earlier this month that its ebook sales increased 16-fold in 2010, representing 3% of revenues. Quercus has predicted that its digital revenues could "realistically reach 10% of our total revenues over the course of the current year". Read the full article here The pic is driving into Melmerby with the Penines rising behind the village.

Interactive books

Keith Stuart imagines ‘a new breed of novels, and a coming generation of writers, to play with the ebook format and develop lots of new interactive ideas.' Many writers already contribute to games, films, comics and novels, merging narrative methods as entertainment possibilities evolve. Readers of crime fiction enjoy sorting the clues from the red herrings, so why not elaborate on that?
One drawback he mentions is that electronic books could be overtaken by adverts. A red alert might pop up every time a real location is mentioned in the text. Readers might be required to hang around in Clerkenwell to 'unlock some extra info on Bill Sykes.' (Not an engaging idea if you live three hundred miles or more from London.)
Yet I can imagine that readers of Jane Austen might actually like to have pic of Colin Firth as Darcy pop up on their screen, or be interested in an illustration of a gown described in the text; why not a picture of Pemberley? A treasure map in adventure novels, a Google map of a city with a specific, relevant spot marked?

As Stuart says, ‘It's not sacrilege, is it? It's just... new.’

Used wisely, it could enhance the reading experience. But there lies the danger. Open the door and the ads might pour in before you can get it shut again. Or maybe we want to make our imagination work and dream up our own version of what’s presented in words. Our brains get precious little exercise these days of tv, film and dvd where its all visualised for us.
Read the full article: here

I took a series of pics early on a misty, frosty morning yesterday and I think the winter colours have a beauty all their own. Look out for more over the next week or two.