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Watch this site –  http://writersandauthors.blogspot.com/2010/06/w-writing-contest-coming-soon.html

While you are there, have a peek at  the interview – http://writersandauthors.blogspot.com/search?q=Poulter  Check out the links too, including one to a FREE  press release posting site!

The interview features info on my new book, coming out with PicPocket Books on iphone in August. It was created in collaboration with Monica Rondino, Andrea Pucci and my youngest daughter, Estelle Poulter. Parents and others – do you have teething babies  or toddlers who bite and have older siblings who object to being bitten?  You might just find some help to be had reading this humorous story with a rhyming element!

Hi All

Thought I’d share some notes on e-publishing, especially with all the excitement generated by ipad. I have two picture books coming out myself on iphone and am looking forward to having picture books on ipad!

Iphone

Pros

Most of the iphone publishers pay better [some much better] royalties than book publishers.

Though the RRP cost of books is low, volume of sales is high compared to hard copy books.

Folk buying an e-book for iphone often buy the hardcopy too if the child likes the book.

If you are publishing with an iphone company who works with  the big publishers or with big children’s media companies, then it potentially brings your work to the attention of  some important networks/people. It puts you book into good company!

Cons

Starts with costing you the author.

There is a setup fee or the set up cost is taken out of your royalties.

You have to make your own audio and ensure it is of ‘professional’ quality or pay to have  the iphone publisher produce it for you. American iphone book producers like to use American accents [sorry Aussies].

If they format the text into the images for you that is a cost as well.

You have to submit the completed book upfront  [not such a hassle for the author/illustrator] as a pdf. For author working with illustrator  it means either you pay the illustrator upfront or they work with you with  royalties in mind. If it is accepted  you may find you have to then submit each frame [individual jpeg image] resized to iphone format . This can mean force sizing, which can distort the image slightly.  If you do not do this yourself, there is a cost for them to do it.

Like all publishers, they are selective.

I have books soon to come out with PicPocket Books and istorytime. [See my website for updates www.jenniferrpoulter.weebly.com - more excitement!]

e-book

kindle

Pro

Good format for b&w and has growing audience.

Con

No colour.

e-book

ipad

Pro

Is all the buzz – is touted as new direction in children’s publishing [most recently at CAL seminar in Brisbane recently].  Not seen as replacing hard copy but as important new outlet.

Penguin are already there, are going for interactive stories on ipad. Exciting! [see UTube and www.engadget.com/.../penguins-ipad-formatted-books-shown-off-making- waves/ ] All the same pluses for iphone also apply here and more.

Con

Same companies doing iphone are now doing ipad as well so the cost  structure may still apply – may change too as ipad is much more flexible than iphone and is beautifully suited to picbooks. Because of this, there may not [note may not] be the same need for audio.

Ripple Reader

Pro

If your book is already in hardcopy, it is ‘free’ [yep that’s right] to load your book onto Ripple Reader and free to join the company.  Ripple Reader pays royalties! It is an exciting innovation that makes your published book accessible much, much more widely.

Con

Your book must exist in a published version first, so that the editing process it has gone through ensures production quality.

Recommended Reading

Latest SCBWI Newsletter [March/April 2010] page 22 – article by Elizabeth O. Dulemba titled, “My 1^st iPhone Picture Book App”. Elizabeth was published with a company called Rhodesoft.com [“Reading Rhino”]. I don’t know as much about them, but they do also require a set up fee.

LINKS

www.jenniferrpoulter

The Summer of Moonlight Secrets is now available as an e-book! It can be purchased through Amazon (Kindle), Sony, Kobo, or Go Spoken. Violet Raines will soon be available in the same formats. Wow!

Publishing is such an extensive subject -- with large publishing houses, smaller publishing houses, e-publishing, POD (print on demand) publishers, and self-publishing.

Since this subject is so generous, I'm going to break it down into separate blogs. Granted, I'm no expert on the subject, but I can draw from my experience -- starting with e-publishing.

I remember when books that were e-published were not considered to be 'real books'. Trust me, it's sad to hear that, because e-published authors aren't the only ones to contend with that stereo-type. I'm published through a smaller publisher with a small print-run, and even with an actual print-run, I had to really push that I was a 'real' author because my publisher wasn't well-known. I will elaborate more on that in an upcoming blog.

I have to admit that I do understand the hesitation of some to accept e-published books. In the earlier days of e-publishing; demand was very low, and it was thought that the only people who got e-published were those who couldn't get picked up by a 'real' publisher. That's a tough reputation to overcome. And, in all honesty, there were and still are some poorly edited stories popping up. But hey, that's happened with even the most reputable, larger publishing houses.

That being said, wanting to be e-published is a choice. It offers some pretty good incentives, yet some pretty big draw-backs too.

Some incentives are e-books are cheaper for the consumer, environmentally friendly, and have a low overhead so the author gets a bigger cut of the royalties. That's pretty sweet. And with all the new e-reader devices, the future looks bright!

On the other hand, you won't see your book in bookstores or libraries. The stereo-type of not being a 'real' author will be an issue. You will need to promote yourself online A LOT to get your name out there and sell e-books. And what if you want to do book signings? Of course, some e-publishers do offer a POD (print on demand) option. So, you could order books for a signing, but you would need to purchase the books first, and unfortunately, some bookstores can be unreceptive to POD authors.

Have I turned you off of e-publishing? I hope not, cuz like I said earlier, it really comes down to an author's choice. You need to ask yourself: What do I want out of my career as an author? How big do I want to go? How much time do I want to invest?

Once you know the answers to these questions -- your choice should be easy.

Are Ebooks finally ready for Prime Time?

I hated it when, about ten years ago, my local library went to the online digital version of the reference book, Books in Print. I tried to look up something about quilts. There were about 5-600 entries beginning with Quilt in the title, and in the paper version, I’d just flip a couple pages and Voila! 2 seconds to find what I needed. In the online version, I had to go through about 30-40 screens before I came to the end of the Quilt titles. Wasted time. Are digital versions or ebooks still a waste of time? Maybe.

Are Ebooks Viable? Yes.

When are ebooks used the most? When traveling.
Friends report that they love to load up several ebooks and keep the weight down in their luggage. Ebooks are used in schools, when textbooks are changed often, as a way to reduce costs to the student. Ebooks are here to stay and will probably co-exist with paper versions for a long time.

We’re going to read ebooks, that battle has been won. The next question is this: are dedicated ebook readers the best option for reading ebooks? Should you buy a Kindle or Sony ebook reader (or some other brand) as a Christmas gift?

Dedicated Readers, iPods and Screens. The biggest problem with reading ebooks has traditionally been the inferior quality of screens and the eye-strain of reading from a screen. In some ways, this is a McGuffin, because, well, we all read online right now, and many of us read many hours a day from a computer screen.

Enter e-ink. It is supposed to be a higher quality, less eye-strain and should be available in color in another year or so. So, let’s agree that the screen-quality problem is about to be solved, or else call it a moot point.

What Happened While You Were So Self-Absorbed. But there’s a complication when deciding on how to read ebooks: technology hasn’t stood still while e-ink has been developing. We now have the iPhone and other smart phones. Here’s where I think the current discussion of ebooks goes wrong. I mean, how many pieces of technology do I want to carry around? The answer for most of us is, not many. Which is why the Apps market for smart phones is so dynamic right now. If I’m carrying around this smart phone, which is always hooked up to the net, then why not do everything on this one piece of equipment.

Optimal Screen Size for Multiple Tasks. Which changes the problem from screen quality to screen size. What is the optimal size screen for multiple tasks? For me, most smart phones fail this test. I want huge, 18″ or bigger, flat-screen, best-quality-I-can-afford monitors. But you can’t carry THAT around with you. And now, we’re down to this question: what size screen is the best compromise for portability, flexibility and easy viewing? What’s the best compromise of features and quality?

Do you see what has changed? My requirements for an ebook reader has been changed by the advent of smart phones. I now want one piece of electronics that has instant, almost-everywhere access to the internet; the screen must be large enough to read comfortably (very important), so I have flexibility in choosing what tasks I’ll do on this device; it wouldn’t hurt either, if it also included a keyboard in a usable size, instead of the teensy-tiny Blackberry and other smart phone keyboards.

Netbooks. For me, the answer is a NetBook.
Can you read ebooks on a netbook? Yes.
Is the netbook dedicated to one and only one task of reading an ebook? No. It’s versatile.

I just found this and thought that some beginner booksellers or collectors might find this of use.  The Alaska State Library published a manual on book repair.  It is an e-book and can be downloaded for free from the Alaska State Library site.  It also appears that you may print it out for your own use as well as long as you are not selling it.

Hopefully this can be useful to some of our readers.

There has been a lot of press recently about e-readers and the long-awaited revolution of e-books. If we are to believe the manufacturers’ claims, people will soon be downloading entire novels to read on these gadgets – not just one at a time, but hundreds of books all on the same handy little electronic device. This got me thinking about what exactly a book is and (more importantly) what makes people buy them.

I sometimes buy books for the content alone. This might be because a friend has recommended a title, because I’ve read some interesting reviews, because I need a certain title for research, or because I've enjoyed other books by that author. In this case, I don’t really care about the packaging and am happy to read it in any form of packaging, however dog-eared. I suppose it’s possible I would read such a book in e-format, though I tend to find print easier on the eye than a screen so it would be no great pleasure for me.

But I also buy books on impulse because I am attracted to the cover image, the title, the colour, the sparkly bits, the fonts used, the illustrations, the feel of the book in my hands, its smell, its age, its value if a first edition, its memories if signed by the author… all the things an e-book cannot deliver. The packaging is especially important if I am buying a book as a gift for someone else.

It's interesting to note that I buy twice as many books on impulse/as gifts than I do because I know I want to read them. So if you are in the business of selling books, removing the packaging that attracts the impulse buyer seems a bit like shooting yourself in the foot. E-books will have no packaging, other than the e-reader itself. Content becomes all. Advertising and promotion will be the only way of bringing such “books” to a potential reader’s attention. The way we buy books will change.

Does it matter? I think it does. I know that as an author my text never feels quite real until the proofs arrive, and if I am disappointed by the production quality of the finished book then I often feel a need to create a more beautiful version myself to do justice to the work. “I am the Great Horse” will one day be a collection of handwritten scrolls kept in a box like Alexander the Great’s edition of the Iliad that he took with him on his epic journey to India and back, and I know many other authors create book art in their spare time, perhaps seeking something more permanent than the electronic text that can be so easily lost, stolen or abused. In contrast, my latest title is a highly illustrated novelty book in beautiful packaging that I keep wanting to pick up just for the pleasure of looking at it - that's the cover above, though a picture can't show you how the actual book glitters and sparkles in the sunlight. Maybe the e-reader will prompt a return to such art, and production values (which have been falling for some time where mass market paperbacks are concerned) will become more important again? I hope so.

As for the e-reader itself, apparently you can get them in pink. But I bet they don’t come in swirly pink and violet with sparkly silver stars and prancing white horses on them. I know which type of book I want on my shelf - and I'm not even seven years old any more!

I was waiting to write about the Kindle story until I knew what the heck actually happeend. As you know, when journalists [or bloggers] write about technology, especially hot button stories, they tend to leave out important information. This is often because they don’t totally understand the mechanisms they’re describing, but also because certain people have vested interests in the story being told a certain way. No one says “A Microsoft virus” they say “A computer virus.” Anyhow… Copyfight, one of my favorite blogs has created a heavily hyperlinked timeline of what was going on with the situation in which Amazon pulled some titles (including Orwell’s 1984), titles users had paid for, off of Kindles. Granted, the blog post uses some heavy-handed language, it’s certainly far from objective, but let’s be not just fair but accurate when we try to explain the ways in which a book is not at all the same as an e-book. The differences matter.

Christina E. Rodriquez is this weeks winner of a free E-book. Christina Contact me at [email protected] with your mailing address to receive a copy of "On the Go With Rooter and Snuffle" on CD. These books are in the popular flip book format that allows the reader to turn the pages using the computer cursor. Enjoy your book Christina.

To be eligible for the next drawing simply leave a comment on this blog and your name will be entered in the drawing.

THIS IS CHILDREN'S BOOK WEEK. LEAVE A COMMENT ON THIS BLOG TO BE ELIGIBLE FOR A FREE E-BOOK DRAWING ON SATURDAY.

Weather or Not! SPRING
by Lynda S. Burch
published by:
Writer's Exchange e-publishing


Teach and have fun at the same time! Little ones love music, so park them in your lap and share the fun of learning and thinking with preschool age and toddlers. The Weather or Not! SPRING Musical E-Picture Book Series teaches the season in a new way through music, lyrics and real time photos. They will learn the answers to how do clouds move in the sky? What makes water splash on top of me? What makes grass green and flowers grow? Don't forget the fun verse with your child's name in it! And please remember to STAY AWAY FROM MONKEYS!!!

http://readerseden.com/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=33

Cool! Sleepless has been released as an e-book for the Kindle. I wish I knew someone who had one of these gadgets. I'd like to play around with it.

If you have one, do you like it?

The book is dead; long live the e-book. Or so the hype and scare-mongering would have us believe. As a writer, I have as much reason to be curious about the likely impact of e-books a anyone, so I snuggled up with the Sony e-book reader and a glass of wine and gave it a chance to prove itself.

‘E-book reader’ is a naff name. Surely I am the reader? Never mind. I opened Anna Karenin. Within the first page (=screen) the straight quotation marks, dull font, US spelling and poor tracking were making it a teeth-gritting experience. The standard text size is about 7 point to squeeze most of a page onto the screen. Zooming in, the text reflows and the page count at the bottom of the screen updates. The e-book reader now says it’s showing page 45 of 4,502. That’s rather daunting. You can’t see at a glance how far through you’ve got – 45 of 4502 is 1%, so that would be about page 5 of the ‘real’, 500-page book. If I was on page 683 of 4502, the maths would be harder.

I miss the satisfying wodge of completed, crinkled, warm pages in my left hand and the pristine pile on the right, tightly packed and full of promise. Instead, there’s just the orphaned current page. It isn’t even a page – it’s a fragment, a disembodied, lost messenger from the rest of the book which is – where? Nowhere; stolen. The book has been dismembered and thrown to the winds, like Osiris. An e-book doesn’t feel as if it exists – every ‘page’ you’re not looking at winks out of existence, like some elusive quantum particle. You can’t flick through the pages, which I hated. Without flickability, it’s impossible to check which character with a long Russian name (or three) is which.

Perhaps Anna Karenin wasn’t a fair trial as I know it already, so I switched to The Book Thief, which I haven’t read (I know, shame on me). I was immediately lost. There are none of the clues and cues that a printed book gives. How long is this book? What’s it about? What’s it like? In a real book, the cover, the weight and colour of the paper, and the layout (font, size of margins, position and content of header, position of page number, twiddles and decoration) all convey messages and set up expectations. I had never been as aware of page design as when there wasn’t any. After a chapter or two, I’d had enough and turned to the paper copy, languishing on the ‘books to read’ shelf. It felt like coming home. While the e-book uses a mundane, blocky type for the title, the paper book is exquisitely designed, with carefully chosen fonts that communicate the character of the tale. The grey, backlit screen of the e-book (the much-vaunted E-Ink technology) has a deadly pallor that drains the text of life – which I suppose might be appropriate in this particular case. The hardback’s creamy paper is easy on the eye and gives a sense of antiquity and seriousness. On paper, The Book Thief uses the real estate of the page creatively; it also has large pages. It’s a strange choice for e-bookising as the specialness and solemnity bestowed by the extravagant use of white (not grey!) space contribute hugely to the character of the book.

I missed a lot reading the e-book. When I re-read on paper what I’d just read on screen I found I’d missed some of the elegance of the style, felicitous use of language, even points of plot. And it wasn’t just because I was re-reading: I read the next chapter on paper first and then in the e-book, and still noticed more on paper. On the screen I saw the grammar – not even style, just grammar – and picked out grammatical ‘errors’ that were allowable elements of style. I wonder if this is because with my own writing I correct grammar on screen, but style and other elements on paper. It would be interesting to know if other writer/readers find the same.

Turning the page in a real book is an event. In a picture book, particularly, the action of turning the page is often integral to the story – it’s a moment of suspense, then discovery, of changing scene or surprise. Turning the page of an e-book means pressing a button; the screen goes momentarily blank before the new page appears. I found its blinking into oblivion distracting and distressing. Brief panic – where’s the story gone? It breaks that meta-suspension of disbelief that lets us believe the story is all there is and the outside world has vanished, and reminds you every time that this is not really real. People say they stop noticing the screen’s blank stare of bewilderment after a while. I’m a master of the blank stare of bewilderment, and I don’t need books or electronic devices doing it back to me. If I became immune to it, I’d be disappointed in myself. Interestingly, I did on one occasion lift my hand to turn the page in the usual way – and was frustrated to have to lower it and press the button.

One of the selling points of the e-book reader is that it’s light, so you can take lots of books on holiday. It always weighs the same, whatever you’re reading, however many books it holds. But the weight of a book tells us something about what the pages contain. We value things that are heavy – a weighty argument, gold … Light is lite is superficial. All e-books weigh the same (nothing) and all look the same. It makes a difference whether we read a book in hardback or paperback, in an old Penguin with an orange cover or a shiny new edition. The e-book reader robs books of their individuality. It is, indeed, a book thief. It does not deal in ‘books’ at all, but in texts that it tries to persuade us are the same thing (which, of course, they are not).

All e-books look the same to everyone else, too. I will talk to someone on the train who’s reading something interesting, but not an anonymous e-book. (It will make a good disguise for pornography.) And how will we judge new potential friends if we can’t scan their bookshelves? It will be hard to open their e-book reader and scan its contents discreetly.

The e-book reader is pretty unsatisfactory if you want to read a literary novel. But literary novels account for few of the books published each year. Some non-fiction and reference books could be usefully bought and used as e-books, particularly if the interface of the reader were improved to make moving around simpler. And there are plenty of fiction not read in nicely designed editions. My father is in his seventies, and reads a lot, usually science fiction. I gave him the e-book reader and he read the script of A Clockwork Orange, all the way through – or to within six pages of the end, when the battery ran out. He is not bothered about the page layout and said he would use it if there were books he wanted to read available (there are), if it were cheaper, and if the books were cheap.

This last point is significant. An e-book has no physical substance – it’s just a downloaded file. The cost to the publisher is similar to producing a paper book until the files are shipped to Far-Off Lands for printing; thereafter, it is zero. No paper, no binding, no shipping, no warehousing, no stock movement, no returns. They should be much cheaper than paper books, but they are not. Why? Surely if publishers gave away e-books with printed copies for now (which will cost them next to nothing) that would encourage customers to get e-book readers? They could read the real book at home, but carry the e-book to read elsewhere. When enough people have readers, e-books could be 99p. This is not ridiculous. I asked a publisher for some figures and it would be possible for an unillustrated, mono book (there’s no colour e-book reader yet anyway).

That’s fine if we really want e-books. But even if e-books are cheap, the reader is expensive. Is a family supposed to share one, and take it in turns to read? Or pay £200 for each of four or five? Do we give one to each child, and replace it as regularly as we replace lost/stolen/dropped/washing-machined/trodden-on iPods and phones? (Incidentally, neither of my daughters was remotely interested in the e-book reader, despite being complete technojunkies.) And when some books are produced only as e-books, what will there be for people who can’t afford an e-book reader? I have a horrible feeling that e-books could undo all the good work for literacy rates that Gutenberg started: if only the rich can afford to read, aren’t we back where we started?

By Evan Schnittman

[A Full Disclosure Note From Evan] Let’s be clear from the start: Neither Amazon nor Sony have told me anything. I get nada, zilch, bupkis when I ask even the most circumspect questions about their respective device sales. If it has to do with Kindle or Reader, I get the standard “go away” line. I have not manipulated sales data, be it OUP’s or any other publisher. I have not analyzed Amazon or Sony ebook sales statistics or rankings. I have not found any secret documents. I have not broken into the vault, I have not cracked the code, I have not had prophetic dreams - well, not about any e-ink devices anyway…

What I do have is a subscription to DIGITIMES that has led me to some pretty outlandish and, I think, substantiated conclusions about Kindle and Sony Reader sales figures. Before you dismiss me as loopy check out the evidence…

When the Kindle first launched there was plenty of predictions about how it and its predecessor the Sony Reader would sell. Over time the chatter died down, halted partly by the Kindle going out of stock. At the end of April, the chatter returned and hit full volume after last week’s Book Expo America in Los Angeles. The catalyst was Jeff Bezos’ speech, which let out some tantalizing, yet cryptic information on ebook sales volume at the Kindle store. The chatter, as reported in the NY Times, has publishers and others speculating that Amazon has sold somewhere between 10,000 - 50,000 Kindles.

I think all the speculations are completely wrong. By my calculations, combined sales of the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader will be 1,000,000 units in 2008. This estimate is based on solid data.

The Evidence
Amazon and Sony both use the 6-inch electrophoretic display (EPD), also known as an e-ink screen. Both companies buy their EPD’s from Prime View International (PVI) of Taiwan. DIGITIMES, a daily news service covering the Taiwanese IT market, reported on April 18th, in a story entitled PVI EDP shipments to grow sharply in 2008, that PVI expects EPD module shipments to reach 120,000 units PER MONTH in the second half of 2008. It further explains that the unit price of the screens are $60-$70 per unit and that the current volume has been 60-80,000 units PER MONTH.

Also intriguing is the article’s claim that 60% of the EPD’s go to Amazon and 40% go to Sony. This is an important factor as it implies that there is a market beyond Kindle – a very, very strong market. Taking the figures at face value, Sony was selling (or at least manufacturing) an average of 28,000 readers per month (I took 70,000 units as the average sold per month and then 40% of that). Using this monthly rate, the annual sales of the Sony Reader are at nearly 350,000 units. Using the same formula, Amazon is ordering an average of 42,000 units per month, which will add up to over 500,000 units sold this year.

With production ramping up to 120,000 units a month these numbers will look much better - to the tune of a combined 1.4 million units over 12 months! Even with the Kindle out of stock for a big chunk of the first and second quarter, combined sales of these two e-ink devices in 2008 will most likely top 1 million. If a million devices are out on the street looking to feed, and we know they primarily eat one kind of food, ebooks, then what must this mean for the ebook sales?

Jeff Bezos said last week that ebook sales in the Kindle store had hit 6% of book unit sales. What this means is that of the 125,000 titles available in the Kindle store, the sales of ebooks represented 6% of the sales of those same 125,000 titles in print formats. Another interesting thing that Bezos said was that Kindle buyers purchase at a rate of 2.5 times more than print book buyers… food for thought when thinking through your ebook strategy.

One can draw some ebook sales conclusions from this information. For example, the number 2 seller at the Kindle store is The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. According to Bookscan, in 4 weeks this book has sold 784,158 units. For the sake of argument, lets ascribe 75,000 units (10% of total sales, a reasonable guess) to Amazon. If Kindle sales were 6%, then Amazon would have already sold 4,500 ebooks. That’s 4,500 people with Kindle’s buying a single title in 4 weeks!

While its clearly amazing that in one month an ebook can sell 4,500 units it is not the best way to calculate the ebook sales impact of Kindle and Reader. A better way to approach this is through good old-fashioned guess-timation. Taking stock of my own experience and the experiences of others I know, I found that ebook buying on either the Sony Reader or the Amazon Kindle ranges from 5 ebooks to over 100 ebooks. Assuming that anyone who buys an e-ink ebook reader is doing so to read ebooks, lets assume that 10 ebooks a year is a reasonable purchase estimate. Using this logic, we should see 10 million ebooks purchased for these two devices in 2008.

The IDPF estimates that in 2007 ebook sales income was $31,800,000 with the caveat that the actual retail income could be as much as double due to retailer discounts, so lets assume that the sales actually totaled $60,000,000. If we use an average retail price of $12 per ebook sold, and if consumers will buy 10 ebooks a year, then they will spend $120 on average, per device. That would lead us to $120,000,000 in ebook sales for the Kindle and the Reader in 2008, double all ebook sales in 2007. (For those of you who cannot swallow the idea of 10 books purchased per device – cut it in half. The result is $60,000,000 in ebook sales – as much as last year!)

Success in technology, like everything else, leads to more success. It’s not uncommon to see five-fold growth the year following a successful technology product launch. Think iPod, think Wii, think Blackberry. Whole micro-economies emerge around products that range from accelerated content creation, and all sorts of aftermarket products and services. Versions 2.0 and beyond create better and better devices. The better the devices, the more accessories, the more content there is, and soon a whole world of business opportunity is rolling downhill picking up speed.

With this in mind, I can easily imagine the success of Kindle and Reader dramatically expanding next year and growing by a factor of five. If that happens, then the formula above leads to a completely new ebook economy. Five million devices would mean ebook sales of $1,200,000,000, which, by my estimation, is 1.3% of the current global book market of $90,000,000,000.

This reminds me of a comment I heard from a music industry executive at a conference a couple of years ago. “One day there was the iPod and iTunes. The next day 20% of our business was digital. The day after that more than 50% of our revenues came from digital music. Yeah, we believe in digital music now.”

I personally don’t see publishing becoming a 50% digital business as books and cd’s are completely different animals. But I sure can see that the 3% - 4% I once predicted isn’t such a crazy notion any more. And yes, I believe in ebooks.

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Moving right along to week three of the Echelon authors interviews.

This week's interviewee is C.A. Verstraete.

Christine is the winner of The Fast and Freaky Fiction Writing Contest (October 2006)for her e-story, The Witch Tree; available at Fictionwise. See link right after Christine's interview!

She is also the author of the nonfiction e-book, In Miniature Style, available at Writer's Exchange E-Publishing: http://www.readerseden.com/manufacturers.php?manufacturerid=243

I am very excited to welcome Christine to my blog! Check out our interview below!

Interview:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and the genre you write.

Answer: I'm kind of a chameleon when it comes to writing. Being a journalist, I've written mostly non-fiction and then started to write short fiction. I enjoy writing mysteries and horror. My short story, "The Witch Tree," won a a "Fast and..." contest and was published by Echelon Press, LLC. http://www.echelonpress.com/. My young adult mystery, "Searching for a Starry Night," has some spooky elements and involves two other favorite elements, dogs and dollhouse miniatures. It will be published in spring '08 by Quake, http://www.quakeme.com/, a division of Echelon Press, LLC.

2. Did you choose your present genre; or did the genre choose you?

Answer: I've always enjoyed reading mysteries, and being a long-time dollhouse miniatures collector, it seemed natural for my book to focus on the search for a missing miniature painting. You can see some of my work at my website, http://cverstraete.com/.

3. Have you always wanted to write?

Answer: One of my favorite baby photos is of me with a newspaper and a pencil stuck behind my ear, kind of prophetic. I remember always wanting to write and began with newspaper writing in junior college.

4. What would be a typical day for you, as a day in the life of a writer?

Answer: I write pretty much every day so I can usually be found at my computer.

5. Where do you get your ideas for your stories?

Answer: I'm lucky to have a vivid imagination. Sometimes a news story or something I see will spark an idea. Other times, I will get an idea or know how to finish a story by having it unfold in an dream.

6. Are any of your characters based on real people?

Answer: I do picture certain persons as I write, but my characters are usually a composite of bits and pieces of different people. They're really figments of my imagination.

7. If you could be any one of your characters, which one would you be, and why?

Answer: Hopefully, I'd be the smart one. ha! It's bad enough making mistakes in real life without having to assume those of your fictional characters, too!

8. Do you do research for your novels? What was the most interesting person, place or thing you have researched?

Answer: It depends on what I am writing about. I do try to double-check facts to make sure the idea I had is right and my memory or idea of it isn't faulty. It is interesting to look up things you weren't sure of. I know I always learn something new!

9. Have you ever had writer's block? If yes, what have you done to overcome it?

Answer: There are times when I've been stuck or something is not coming out the way I want, but since I write every day, I've never really been blocked. With deadlines, you don't have time to be blocked. If something isn't coming out right, I simply move on to something else and work on a different story for awhile, then go back to it. If I have to get it done that day, then that is my motivation to finish.

10. Do you have any advice for the young writer just starting out?

Answer: Don't be afraid to write. Don't doubt yourself. You are usually your own worst enemy. If you have a talent, then don't let anyone, or anything, stand in your way of fulfilling your dreams.

11. And just for fun, if you could be a Transformer, which would you be? An Autobot (the good bots) or a Decepticon (the evil bots)? =D

Answer: I'd definitely be a good bot. There is enough evil in the world!

Thank you so much, Christine!

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