Book formats…
Some authors are traditionally published and have their book formats determined by their publishers. Others must decide. (Being a mongrel author, I know both sides well.) A minority must decide on the print formats for their books. Each format has particular followers, but there’s a lot of overlap among those groups.
The “classic formats” are now hardbounds, trade paperbacks, and small paperbacks, among the print versions, various ebook formats (mostly .mobi and .epub), and audiobooks. The media in each case is different; the content is the same: short story collections, novellas, and novels, for fiction, and novel-length or longer tomes for nonfiction.
Every author needs print versions for book events. I suppose there’s some way to hand out a card or something with website info where readers can go to retrieve “electronically signed” ebook copies, but that seems clumsy to me. At book events, readers want to hold a physical copy in their hands. I’ve watched them peruse them—the interest, the wonder, the love for books, from age nine to ninety. If authors don’t do book events (many don’t for lack of events in their area, or the time and money required to set up these events), they can get away with just ebooks, but they’ll be missing out on older readers if they don’t have some available in their oeuvre. Preferences for print might be mixed too. In my case, for example, I like my nonfiction in print and my fiction in ebooks. The latter save my bookshelves from sagging and crashing (I buy a lot more fiction) and are easier for me to send to reviewers, especially overseas (the postage is often onerous). I also know many commuters who prize audiobooks for their long commutes.
I have more ebook-only novels and short story collections than print/ebook titles. I have no problem with this because there are enough in my list of print/ebook titles in my oeuvre that I can cover my book events. Novels from small presses (I now work with two) are invariably print/ebook titles. Indie authors and those published by small presses usually don’t have audiobooks unless the authors finance them themselves. The reason is simple: audiobooks are expensive to produce if done right, that is, a professional reader is a must, and those readers are expensive!
The cost criterion often means that hardbounds are a rarity for indie authors and authors published by small presses. What about those small paperbacks you find in airporsts? It’s possible that some small presses are missing market share here—many travelers still pick up a paperback in an airport store before a long flight, although I just load up my Kindle before long trips (mostly cruises now, and not travel for a day-job—I’ve done my share of that!).
After perusing those paperback racks at airports for years, I’ve concluded that they only contain books from big publishers who are trying to squeeze a bit more profit from reading travelers. And I have no idea how other authors could get a paperback displayed on those racks—it’s hard enough even to get print books in bookstores, because the big publishers dominate that market too.
That’s too bad. The reading public is generally denied access to all the good books available by good authors. And with so many mergers among the big publishers, one can make a case that they’re monopolizing the market, i.e. anti-trust laws should apply. I haven’t read much fiction from big publishers in the last five years since my access to those airport racks has diminished in step with my less frequent travel. I’m guessing those small paperbacks are still low-priced compared to big publishers’ trade paperbacks, hardbounds, and ebooks, which I can no longer afford. The last book I read from a major publisher was Woodward’s Fear, which is nonfiction, and that was a gift. (I could have read that as an ebook. I can’t imagine reading Isaacson’s Leonardo Da Vinci, the next-to-last Big Five book I read, as an ebook, though; someone gave me that one too.) I figure I can find plenty fiction ebooks to read from indie authors and authors published by small presses, and their ebook prices are reasonable.
To conclude, for indie authors, I recommend first ebook versions. (But don’t be exclusive on Amazon, because they don’t offer all the ebook formats or distribute to other ebook retailers—in fact, you can be exclusive to Smashwords, because they have all ebook formats, including Amazon’s .mobi, and they distribute to iBooks, B&N, and Kobo.) Indie authors should only release a few trade paperbacks if they do book events, where they need them, or they want to try to get your books in bookstores (that generally depends on their connections with bookstores—I’ve had mixed results with my indie titles). For authors publishing via a small press, hopefully their publishers do both ebooks and trade paperbacks. Generally speaking, you won’t have much choice if you’re traditionally published, but authors can always complement their book formats by adding other ones to the mix, often spending money in the process.
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Comments are always welcome!
The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan. This spin-off from the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” along with the novella The Phantom Harvester (see the list of free downloadable PDFs on the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page), serve as bridges to the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy.” It answers the following question: what might an authoritarian U.S. government do with the nation’s elderly who possess Top Secret information? The answer is only part of the plot, because an old nemesis of the detectives wants to bribe a presidential candidate…or eliminate her if he can’t! DHS agent Ashley Scott becomes involved in this broader conspiracy after she witnesses a murder on Frank Sinatra Way in Hoboken, NJ. The victim is a nurse from a retirement home for government employees. On sale now at Smashwords at 50% off.
In libris libertas!
