So, it started out like this. My mother decided to buy a Nook a few weeks ago. And then, after hearing me tell her about all the authors who give away free books or offer very reasonably priced novels, she couldn’t find any. Now, she’s not exactly technically savvy, so in complete frustration with her, I went onto the B&N site to look myself.

One thing that B&N does is try very hard to hide its cheap and free books. Try navigating around on your nook to find them. It’s a pain. It’s certainly not impossible and my mother should have been able to do it, but it does take a little effort.

This got me to thinking about the plethora of Amazon/Kindle sites out there devoted to promoting cheap kindle reads. They are huge promotional machines. I’ve seen indie authors shoot up onto the lists just because they were featured on a Pixel of Ink or Kindle Lovers or somesuch. But a quick google search for an equivalent Nook Book site I could send my mom to yielded…um…nothing.

Obviously, there’s a hole in the market, so I aim to fill it. Together with Eliza Knight, we’ve started a new Nook Lover’s site just in time for all those folks who are opening their Christmas presents and finding Nooks under the tree. Sites like these take a little time to build so we’re not charging anything for anyone to be featured there. In fact, if you are featured now, when the site is still tiny, we will feature you again when we’re booming, at no cost.

So do you guys have any feedback or advice to give? Anybody want to try it out?

You know the age of the digital book has come when you get a call from your mother asking for advice on which e-reader she should buy. My mom’s not exactly a luddite, but she is a penny-pinching late-adopter who doesn’t know, or want to know, anything about gadgets.

She knows what she wants from an e-reader–or at least, she thinks she does. She wants a device on which she can read library books. She also wants a device on which she can listen to audio books (preferably those she can obtain from the library). And she doesn’t want a computer to read it to her…she wants the expensively produced audio-books with real actors.

Here’s the (possibly incompetent) advice I wrote up for her:

However, if you get a smart-phone  in addition to an e-reader, then this shouldn’t be a concern. I listen to audio-books all the time, but not on my e-reader. I use my phone for that. It would be great if I could listen to everything and read everything on one device, but I haven’t been willing to shell out the cash for an iPad. At least not until I’ve sold enough books to pay for my wooden floors

Today I have the honor of hosting a guest post from Carmen Webster Buxton, an early adopter of eBook technology who has gone on to become an authoritative source of news for all things eReader. We’d all be wise to listen to what she has to say. And as a bonus, Carmen will choose one lucky commenter on this post to win a free Smashwords or Kindle copy of her latest book.

eBooks: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

by

Carmen Webster Buxton

The last two years have seen explosive growth in digital publishing for books, shifting an industry that hadnít really changed much over the last half century. The tipping point for change began when Amazon introduced the Kindle. The Sony Reader had beat them to the punch as far as providing a good quality e-ink screen; if you’re not familiar with it, an e-ink screen resembles a printed page, black text on light gray. Because it’s not backlit there is less chance of eyestrain, and, as a side benefit, the battery lasts a long time (days or even weeks) on a charge. A lot of ebook readers prefer e-ink to LCD for long-form reading for those reasons. But in spite of the screen, the Sony Reader didn’t sell that well. It didn’t offer wireless connectivity, and Sony didn’t have much of an ebookstore. The Kindle was simpler to use, and offered a lot more books; it caught on and inspired a plethora of competition, including the Nook (and later the Nook Color) from Barnes & Noble.

Next, Amazon and Barnes & Noble began offering applications (apps) that let you buy and read Kindle and Nook books on smart phones, PCs, and Macs. You didn’t need a dedicated (single-purpose) ereader to read ebooks. When Apple came out with the iPad, that also helped push digital publishing forward. Apple opened its own iBooks store, and other companies made ereader apps for the iPad. Having ereader apps available captured the occasional reader. No one buys a dedicated ereader if they only read four or five books a year, but if you already have a shiny new iPad, why not also use it to read those four or five books? Besides, the color LCD screen on iPads, tablets, and laptops are big enough to also display magazines and even comic books. Digital reading grew even more.

That’s the good. The bad is, between ebooks and online sales of print books, bookstores are dying left and right. My hope is that the weakening of the giant chains will leave some breathing room for small independent bookstores. The chains could beat the indies on price and selection, but online can beat the chains on those things. What the indies can offer—knowledgeable staff, atmosphere, readings and other author events—online can’t do. Besides, another new technology, print on demand (POD) offers hope that bookstores could eventually print books on site, a more viable selling model for a store than having to keep shelves full of the books they hope people will want to buy. Right now POD machines are too expensive for most small stores, but as they come down in price, we could see more of them.

And the ugly? Well, for a while that was ebooks themselves. Publishers are still working out the kinks in their workflows. At first they simply converted the PDF they used to send to the printer to create the ebook version. Using that file had the advantage of having all the last minute corrections in it, but the conversion didn’t always translate the printed page into the correct ebook layout. Paragraphs sometimes ran together, and words hyphenated for line length ended up in the ebook looking like this: hyphen- ation. Alternatively, publishers would use the MS Word files that authors had submitted, which didn’t have all the typos corrected. This also produced bad results, for obvious reasons. Finally, as ebook sales grew, publishers began to pay attention to their digital products and workflows. You still see occasional problems, but it’s much better than it was.

The final development combines good, bad, and ugly into one huge ball. That’s self-publishing. Because ebooks are always sold online, writers can self-publish without having to cart boxes of books around to bookstores, pleading for shelf space. Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble offer easy-to-use self-publishing platforms that put those ebooks into their stores right along with traditionally published books. Companies like Smashwords offer only self-published books. What this development means is that anyone can publish a book. And that’s good in a way, because it gives writers a chance to find a readership without having to find an agent and/or editor whose taste matches what they write. But it’s bad, too, because no one is imposing any quality control on self-published books. Some self-published writers get feedback, and hire editors and cover artists, and others operate strictly on their own, and it shows when you start reading their books— really ugly! The only reason self-published books are worth checking out is another great thing about ebooks—the free sample. When you look at Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Amazon or other online ebook retailers, they almost invariably (for novels, anyway) offer a free sample that you can download or read online. Truly ugly books are obvious on page 1, and you have about 10 to 20% of the book to tell if you will like the story or not. It’s a wonderful feature.

Of course, some people love their print books and have no interest in changing over to reading on an ereader or multi-purpose device. That’s just fine. I don’t think print is going away any time soon. eReaders have gone mainstream, but they aren’t yet ubiquitous enough to replace the print market.

But we definitely live in exciting times where books are concerned! In fact, it’s getting harder and harder to write far future science fiction because our technology now is catching up to some of our classic science fiction. I have “book readers” in some of my books that can use energy from the human reader’s hands to power the screen, and can translate the text into any language desired. That’s one reason I like to include a love story in most of my books. I am pretty sure falling in love won’t change as much as ereader technology will.

Everybody talks about summer reading, but for me, winter is the best season for books. Is there anything better than curling up with a cup of cocoa by the fire and immersing yourself in a novel? Post here in the comments and let me know what book you’re reading right now. I’ll enter you in a drawing to win a $10 gift certificate and a free copy of one of my books.

(Note: By entering the contest, you agree to let Stephanie Draven use your name on this website and her blog if you win. Your email address will never be sold or transferred to any third party. Stephanie might, however, contact you with the very occasional update on her writing and career. At your request, however, you’ll be promptly deleted from her mailing list.)