ebooks anyone?

I started reading news articles and I came across one about how positive the recent amazone/apple/ipad/kindle/ebook/Macmillan is for book readers and authors as well. This article started me thinking about how ebooks are effecting things for writers.

Right now, we have many devices for reading ebooks that we didn’t used to have. Many people own an ipod touch or an iphone. I don’t know how blackberries or androids compare, but if they are similar enough, you might be able to read an ebook on there. Almost everyone own computers and fast interent. Then you have all of the currently released ebook readers, from Kindle to sony. Now, we have an ipad, and who knows what will come out the near future.

Also, there are hundred now of self publishing places that let you publish the book without costing you much, if any, money. Yes, you get pennies for your book depending on what you set your price to, but it is possible.

The question comes then why not post books as ebooks? Obviously, as writers who are hopefully activity trying to find a market to sell their books, we don’t want to make them fall flat. However, I think I can see a few good reasons. Now, I don’t know the publishing business that well so I might be totally off my mark, but it makes sense to me.

First of all, if the purpose for writing is so others can read and (hopefully) enjoy your work, then it makes sense that by putting it on the internet would make it possible to reach a larger group of people than just your close circle of friends. (That is partly why I started this blog.)

Secondly, although this is highly unlikely, if you create a large reader base, it could be possible that publishers would see actual money in publishing you. You aren’t just a random no name. You’re [blank] who wrote [famous ebook].

Baen did this actually. They said that it made sense to offer a few choice books to readers online, so they could see what they might be getting into before they committed to buying a book. If you are really certain about what you wrote, then why not share it?

My greatest fear with putting something like that online is I don’t see the logical holes within my story. Not really. I would hope that if I were published, the editor would tell me, “Abigail, this part really stinks and makes no sense.” I just don’t know. By publishing them to the internet so that way everyone could download them whenever they want, I might actually be publishing something very bad.

Then again, don’t we all not really know when we send something to the publisher whether it is good or bad? It’s all a gamble.

So I’m thinking about putting Shad up for download once I finish editing it. I originally planned on posting it here, decided that it would not work because how poorly Giant’s Wife came out and went over, and changed my mind. (If I did post it, I would make a separate place, such as shad.alwaysawriter.wordpress.com, if I can do that.) So I don’t know. I’ll have to look into this when spring break comes.

Anyone have any other opinions about ebooks?