Ebookworm

Kids make up a large portion of the ebook audience. Very often when a parent buys a new device-whether a tablet, smartphone, or ereader-the previous device gets turned over to the kids. As a result, the amount of electronic children's offerings available is growing, both revamped classics as well as new titles designed as ebooks from the start.

The holiday season has come and just like every other year, publishing sales reports are coming in and people are declaring that sales weren't good enough. The big news was of course ebooks and e-readers. Amazon reported Kindle sales of...well, no, Amazon won't report actual numbers-let's face it, they don't have to- but they did say that consumers were buying over one million Kindles per week in December and three Kindle models dominated their top sellers' list for the better part of December.

If there is one thing that continues to perplex the publishing industry, it's ebook pricing. How do you structure your pricing in a way that is fair to both the reader and the author and still make enough money to continue publishing operations? Many larger publishers want to keep the ebook price structure high, especially at the beginning, to keep from cannibalizing more profitable hardcover sales.

No longer is it just editors and agents on the subways and buses with their submission pile on Sony e-readers; it's actual, real, live, nonindustry people who just love to read. Harris Interactive, Inc. polled more than 2,000 people in July of this year and found that roughly 15% of those polled already owned an e-reader, and 15% of those who did not own an e-reader were likely to buy one in the next 6 months.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, and it seems many shoppers decided to forego the stampedes and fistfights associated with Black Friday and shop from their office chairs on Monday instead. IBM is reporting that it may well have been the strongest Cyber Monday yet with online sales up over last year by 33%, and order value up 2.6%. Another big change: more and more people are doing their shopping via a mobile device such as a smart phone or tablet. Almost 11% of traffic to online retailers was from mobile users. Sales via mobile devices were up as well, from 2.3% last year to 6.6% this year.

Amazon's Kindle Fire, releasing November 15th, is setting more than a little spark in the world of mobile devices. The original Kindle was a dedicated ereader but with Fire, Amazon is moving squarely into tablet territory. And it's a good thing too!

As an editor, my first introduction to digital books was actually as part of the traditional printing process. Over the past few years, I found paper was being used less and less for submissions, galleys, and proofreading. I received electronic versions of the manuscript at various stages and could then email pages to an author for changes rather than mail hard copies, with a quicker response time, and big savings on overnight shipping costs. (And you better believe some of my colleagues resisted those changes as vehemently as they've resisted the ebook.) I've even started editing online, using Microsoft Word and Track Changes rather than a trusty old red pen. The electronic manuscript I work with is in essence an ebook, even though it will eventually be sent to a printer.