eBooks… A passing craze or the wave of the future?

First off I want to apologize for the lack of a column last month. I HAD intended to do a Valentine’s day feature and put out a query to several book groups I belong to asking for everyone’s favorite Valentine’s Day reads… those stories that epitomize the holiday itself, or that are strong examples of what Valentine’s Day is all about (love and romance, love and romance and more love and romance). Unfortunately my computer died right in the middle of that and I was without a computer for about three weeks. Then just when I decide to stay after work one night to write my column, my network there went down (a common occurrence where I work) so there went my fall back plan.

As it turns out, I only got one response anyhow, which actually, looks to be a response to my 2004 wrap-up column, where I asked for everyone’s favorite reads of the year. That mention of a favorite book was from Peggy who said Linda Howard’s To Die For “was so funny and it had some suspense. I truly did not want the book to end.”

I’ve then spent the past couple weeks trying to think of what I wanted to write about this month. As the deadline loomed closer and closer, I feared I was not going to think of something. Then, this morning as I was taking my shower it hit me. I’ve become an advocate for eBooks over the past year or so, finding a whole new world of books when I opened up to trying them. So if course, there’s my topic for this month….

I admit I used to be one of those people who stayed away from eBooks. Nothing could replace the feel of holding a book in my hand to be read anywhere, bed, beach, pool, the office, and restaurants. I heard people talking about this new thing called an electronic book and how great it was, and my thoughts were “How can it be better then the feel, the scent and the look of a regular print book?” So I was resistant to change for quite a while. Give me old fashioned paper over modern electrons any day, was my thought.

Then a few years ago, I forget when exactly I read my very first eBook or even what it was, I was totally unimpressed with it. The editing was terrible, the plotline was thin and something way overdone and it looked like a sixth- grader could have written something better. So that clinched it for me for another year or so. I thought eBooks were a total waste of my time and refused to read any more. And unfortunately, I got in my head that people who got published in electronic format only did because they couldn’t get published anywhere else. I thought that electronic publishing houses were more of a vanity press, and not “real” publishing. Boy was I wrong!

I think that happened to a lot of people in the early days of eBooks, at least I know I’ve heard others mention it in conversation. I think a lot of what came out in the early days, was not of as good a quality editing and storyline as most paperbacks were and that turned a lot of people off of eBooks for a while. I know for me, it made me come to the conclusion initially that eBooks would not last if that was all the better they could produce and for a long time I refused to touch another one.

I slowly changed my opinion though. I belong to numerous book groups online and have for several years. I started to notice that this eBook thing was not going away like I had expected it would and that in fact, more and more people were talking about it. So I started to wonder if maybe my initial impression was wrong. After all, if all the books were as bad as the couple I read, why would so many people be buying them up en masse? Around this same time I started to rethink the eBook idea, I joined a couple new internet groups that had a lot of authors I’d come to know and like in other lists.

Wow did that ever open my eyes! So many of these authors were talking about their books, their future books, what kinds of plots they were interested in writing, and they were all ePublished. So I decided these stories sounded so wonderful I had to give them a try. I also had been well into my new hobby of book reviewing by this time, and the majority of the requests I was getting were for eBooks. I kept passing on them, still having that stigma in my mind that the books were all bad, but the descriptions of the stories sounded so good. So how could these horrible types of books have such fabulous sounding storylines? I finally caved in, probably a year or so ago, and decided to try out a short story by one of these authors I had gotten to know over the internet. Here my opinion of eBooks changed drastically. I loved loved loved the story and had to have more. So I went out and bought all the rest of the stories by this particular author and devoured each and every one. Then I started listening to all these authors and started trying stories by different authors at different publishers, all electronic. Suddenly, there were very few books I did not enjoy and I couldn’t get enough of these unique stories.

I had been getting bored with the large print publishing houses, finding it more and more difficult to find a book that really grabbed my attention and made me want to buy it when I went book shopping. I found a few authors that eased that boredom for me, who were pioneers of a sort of their chosen genres. But I noticed these books that had been so unique were now commonplace and not interesting anymore. Once a “new” idea hit the market, everyone wanted to write it so we got stormed with books that all sounded so much alike and so formulaic. And that is not what I was looking for. I wanted newer, hipper, fresher stories and more and more I could only find these electronically. That’s not to say there aren’t some great print authors out there, because there are, but I couldn’t find enough to feed my habit just in that market anymore. I was on to better things. So I went and bought myself an electronic book reader and now, that is almost all I read.

Sure, ePublishing has its flaws, but so does print. I have found books that sounded identical to what another author ePublished and therefore turned me off of that author, and I have found some of the tried and true storylines that are good but not quite up to snuff, and of course I found some that should have been unique, but bored me to tears. However, I have found far fewer books I cannot finish in this format then in print. I think my biggest problem still out there with eBooks is the editing. There seems to be more editing errors in eBooks then I have found in print. The primary reason for this seems to be due to turn around time on manuscripts to final work. The publishing cycle for electronic books seems to be much faster then for print. The time between when the final manuscript falls under the editing knife to when the final product is unveiled happens at a faster pace, due to the relative ease of publishing electronically as opposed to sending to a printing press and having books produced in mass market. Sometimes these errors really stand out and drive me batty, other times they are less noticeable and I don’t even register the error until I’m long past it. And of course there is the slight problem of not quite being able to read an eBook in the bathtub or on a raft in the pool. There are ways to do it, but nothing that is super easy to manage.

For me, the benefits far outweigh the problems. Now, I can have a couple hundred books on one or two CDs rather then three or four book shelves. It sure gives me more space when I don’t have to have paper books all over the place. When I go on vacation or on a business trip, my suitcase is no longer half full of books. I may bring one or two with me, but I can store 50-60 on my eBookman that takes up as much space as one paperback book. I always have a variety of reading choices. If I don’t like one book, I can move on to another without risk of running out of things to read. I have found that ePublishers are more willing to take risks then large print houses. There are stories that are very different, nothing like what is found elsewhere. Also, the option for someone to write a book that is more cross-genre then would be expected is there. Some of the stories I’ve read I have a very hard time locking into one category, there are so many genres the book can fit. Also, many authors have a higher publishing rate per year in the electronic world as opposed to print. Just think, we can get five, six, or even more books from a beloved author in one year instead of the usual two to three books a year for most authors in print. Yes, there are some very prolific ones out there who seem to have print books out every single month, but those are few and far between. And a big seller for me, eBooks are usually less expensive! I can buy 4-6 eBooks for the price of one hardcover book. For someone like me for whom book buying is an addiction, this method is much easier on the wallet!

I don’t think that eBooks will ever entirely replace paper books on the market but I do see the electronic side of publishing to keep growing and adding more and more unique storylines to the market. I also see my purchases of mass market to slowly decline, though it will never stop, whereas my eBook purchases will grow and grow as I find more authors I enjoy, quicker release dates, vibrant storylines that expand the market in ways I can only imagine at present.

I am going to break from the norm here in that I’m not going to list favorite books this month, I’ll save that for the future, when I hopefully get feedback on this subject. This month, I am only going to list some publishers and websites where you can go find some of these eBooks. There are way more publishers then I am aware of, I’m sure, so this list is by no means all inclusive. Also, I cannot vouch for all of these publishers as I have not tried books from all of them.

NOTE: some of these publishers are erotica/romantica and not for anyone under the age of 18.