Derek Paterson - The Vampyre's Kiss

I feel singularly unqualified to make any kind of judgment of the eBook market or prediction of its potential. But the positive aspects are obvious: the speed at which a book can be edited, published and in the hands of readers. That's a huge difference to the way authors and editors have always worked. There's also a big rise in the number of readers who obtain their fiction online through choice. One major eBook retailer distributes its email flyers to 180,000 members, all of whom are potential paying customers. That's a staggering audience, and that's only one retailer.

The disadvantages, from an author's viewpoint? Once your 15 minutes of fame as a new title at the top of the lists are over -- which in real time can sometimes translate to as little as just a couple of weeks -- that's it, you're terminated. Newer titles and better selling titles will push your beloved work of art down the list until it's out of sight, out of mind -- unless yours beats the odds to fight its way upriver and become a best seller. But competition is fierce. Besides other new titles there's also a constant deluge of older titles, effectively reprints from years ago that are being re-released to take advantage of the new electronic publishing markets. That's not to say they don't deserve to be re-released. But there doesn't seem to be any attempt by retailers to segregate new, first-time-published titles from older titles, which seems a little odd to me. Then again, why should they? The retailers are there to make sales, not to fret over new books being knocked out of the top 25 slots -- most visible to potential buyers -- by re-issued novels and short stories by known authors that were first published years ago. That's how the market works. I say enjoy your 15 minutes and get on with writing your next epic story. Which is what I'm doing now.

-Derek DPaterson57@aol.com http://hometown.aol.co.uk/DPaterson57

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