Notes & Comments

The e-book revolution is finally starting to arrive, this time legitimately for real.  The royalties I received from Penguin at the start of October were around 15% attributable to e-book sales, and several books had sold hundreds of e-book copies, a good deal of which are attributable to the Kindle. Compared to a mass market paperback, e-book royalty rates are higher and the e-book dollars are disproportionate to the actual number of copies sold.  However, if the e-book revolution eventually leads to $10 e-books selling instead of $25 hardcovers it will lead to a loss in revenue to the Author.  The Sony Reader is coming out in a new and improved edition, which will still retain its Mac-unfriendliness but allow annotations and note-taking as currently on the Kindle.  There have also been glimpses of a 2nd-generation Kindle which may arrive in early 2009.  

The NY Times reports that consumer spending is down.  Bookstores are not immune to this, alas.  Looking over the Nielsen Bookscan numbers for JABberwocky over the past couple weeks, a lot of backlist titles seem to have fallen to record low sales weeks.  This is not a good thing.

At least here, we are able to enjoy the Charlaine Harris phenomenon.  7 Sookie Stackhouse books on the NY Times list this week, 7 again next week.  The odd thing is that this is happening even though the books can be hard to find in stores.  It looks like this will begin to settle down in the next week or two; Borders as an example is putting huge reorders in to stock an endcap that will last thru November, and I'm told B&N has floor displays to come.  Still, it's been an odd thing the past month to have so many books on the bestseller list without having the visual component of seeing them in large glorious quantity on shelves.