QUOTE: Originally posted by Jamesaritchie
This may change someday when paperless books have all the advantages of paper books

Can you give exampes, or pro/cons, of one medium over the other?

QUOTE: Good or bad, nothing succeeds unless in some way, shape, or form, it generates a profit, and where there's profit there's big business, and where there's big business, writers will follow.

I would disagree that something cannot succeed without a profit, unless you're speaking a 0 profit. I do believe that even open source or charities must exist with an income. But if we're talking the kind of profits that traditional publishers bring in annually, I wouldn't necessarily agree that epublishing couldn't thrive without that. It does however, depend on backing, and here I foresee a problem. If the store chains, in this case online, aren't there to back the epublishing houses, they can't survive except as a vanity press or as a self run business (such as a small publishing house for an author who neither wants to pay a vanity press or go through a traditional publisher). It certainly is a discussion with lots of 'what if's and potential late-night, coffee drinking debates! [^]

QUOTE: Right now, at least, e-book are almost always of lower quality than print books, simply because good writers go to traditional publishing houses where they get paid good money. Traditional publishes get the cream, and always will as long as they pay the most money. It's easier to get published this way because the money is very low, and the competition is far less.

I wish to rebuttal this remark based on research I've recently been conducting on the topic. Any ebook I've downloaded for free is either very bad, or as palatable as lima beans (no offense to those who enjoy lima bean!!). Ones I've purchased from a certain large .com store we all know, and from two smaller presses, have been very good. They weren't of the same caliber as J.K. Rowling, Dean Koontz or Douglas Adams, but I finished them and enjoyed my read.

I feel that the debate has two differnt directions that have influened our varying opinions about the qualit of ebooks:

• Perhaps the quality of ebooks simply falls under the old saying, 'you get what you pay for.' In which case, that doesn't leave much room for discussion becuase it's ever true


• The ebooks that are published and free, are made by amateurs who have not honed their craft. Those that are puchased have been screened by an editorial staff and publishers who are qualified in their positions, but perhaps not the best, but like traditional publishers, they are striving to find decent writers. Also, unlike traditional publishers, they are able to publish more when they aren't dealing with printing costs, etc.

What are your feelings on this?

QUOTE: Originally posted by gypsy_agent


I'm curious about what others opinions are about ePublishing.


Hello gypsy_agent!

I think every avenue has both advantages and disadvantages, and some lend themselves better to some uses than others.

I just published a nonfiction book and have also made it available as an e-book (through two different companies). It's a short "how-to" manual, so I thought there might be readers would want to take their time with it, so the book might be good for them, and then there might be people who have gotten a last-minute assignment and need to know what to do right now—this latter group can download the file while working on their project (I'm thinking information may be more important than print quality in an emergency).

I think there are rules against saying the names of people and products here, so I'm not going to list my title (although, now that I'm thinking about it, I could post an announcement, couldn't I?). If you're interested, click on the link in my signature to go to my web site. You'll see that I have two links on the second page—one for ordering the book and another for ordering the e-book as a downloadable file to either a printer or a computer. Another nice feature of the e-book is that it cost me absolutely nothing—I'm not kidding. Zero dollars, and just an hour or so to learn how to upload my book file (I'm not a techie, so this would probably take you no time at all!). The free company will also deliver a hard-copy in book form if you'd like that option (also free to you)!

I think these new technologies are amazing. There are always trade-offs, but if you match the method of publishing with your goals, I think you can find something that makes you happy.

Good luck!

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Writing that gets results!
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