To begin our blogger journey, we've decided to spend the first round joining in the ever-growing ebook v's traditional book argument. We'll begin with my view and follow up with another.
Hmmm...to ebook or not to ebook: that is the question.
Okay, so because I have a book published and available for amazon kindle, does this make me 100% for the ebook side? Not necessarily.
I am hugely traditional. I love the smell of a book, the feel of the pages and the sounds they make as you flick through the story. And I love the look of them stacked in a bookshelf, their colourful spines greeting you happily every time you walk up to them. Nothing beats a good book - but I am overly aware of the growing demand for ebooks. They're on the rise. We can't hide from them and hope they'll go away, because let's face it, that's not going to happen any time soon. I think we should accept that they're there and include them in our plans.
There are a lot of good points about ebooks too. There are an abundant of good reads available to download that are cheaper and don't take up any space. Ereaders are also light to hold so your hands won't start to ache half an hour into reading War and Peace, and there's no chance of a random page being ripped out (usually the very last page) so that you can't complete your story. You can store as many books as you want (within reason) on an Ereader and is so much handier than taking four individual books on holiday, especially if your luggage has a weight limit.
Ebooks are now part of the publishing world. I don't think they will ever replace the proper book, but it's nice for readers to have a choice on how they want to read. With the growing market, I think any publisher who snubs the idea of ebooks are only going to be cutting their nose off to spite their face. They'll be losing out on a lot of money. It's big business.
However, one thing I'm not too keen about is how easy it is for anyone to self publish. I may sound hypocritical now, seeing as I have self published this very way, but by doing so has cut a huge corner off the publishing process. Publishers and editors have slush piles for a reason. They have editing filters for a reason. Self publishing on the likes of amazon cuts out that whole process. Therefore when you download an ebook, there's no real guarantee that it will be to the same quality you'd normally get from the likes of Hodder and MacMillan. I'm not saying they're all like that. If you dig deep you can find some real gems, but the ebook bookshelves are fast becoming a publisher's slush pile, and is another reason why I believe that if you want to make a huge successful career as an author, you go the traditional route.
So, in conclusion to my rant: Ebooks Vs Traditional book? Both. Embrace paper and electronic; give the consumer the choice they want with their books and you can't go wrong.
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