e-pulp

Last month (March 2015) I passed a milestone* As a treat I decided to gee myself up by looking at what some people earn in the industry. This led me to Author Earnings. While looking around, I was reminded that a strident tone often hides uncertainty. The site looks at the Indie side of publishing and this post will primarily be of interest to publishers.

Traditional Publisher Outlook
The hollowing out of the profitable low-brow markets continues.It has become increasingly difficult for big name publishers to justify premiums on that product when e-distributors can offer equivalent product at vastly reduced prices.
Correspondingly, the changed landscape for published writers continues to evolve. He or she faces the prospect of competition. This is a particular issue if their product is undifferentiated. Low-brow entertainment is a weak point in the offerings of publishers as new writers continue to take matters into their own hands. The standard delivery mechanism is more and more via self-publishing. Indies are expected to cannibalise what’s left of the cheap end of the market and in due course most traditional publishers will be driven to the wall, other things being equal. Gresham’s Law will prevail. This scenario will leave Amazon’s Kindle in a commanding position.

Mickey Mouse – we all loved him as kids. We grow up but the pure escapist delight lingers. It’s out there, populating the Amazon top titles. Publishers are scared. Its purveyors aren’t; they’re raking it in.
As a rule my thought processes run in parallel, skipping and hopping from tangent to tangent. I rule in, or out alternative readings. My views are informed by a long diet of literature in my field – Mars, Space, Colonisation, Victoriana, Drug altered Reality… when I read something, I expect a plausible framework. The author of SF / Fantasy has more to do – he / she’s gotta help suspends the reader’s disbelief. Mickey Mouse works don’t do this.

Is all e-pubber output poor man’s product? or just some? Where does your book lie? Who knows the comparative stats?
Top sellers I’ve peeked at are, at best, patchy. I checked the home-team, which for me is SF. So first stop, highly ranked Kindle SF. And it’s… a big plot fail on the first page! Mars Invaded!! At the heart of a human space empire!!! ?? Why would I read this? Has it been anywhere near an editor? If I’d read this at my local SF writer group…
Where I come from words aren’t minced. Grace and manners suggest I rephrase my knee jerk response from ‘what’s this crap?’ to ‘please edit the trash’. Would I buy? No.
This read cast me back in time to a Water Stealer Yarn. Never mind that ice bearing asteroids are all over our system, They’re Coming to Steal Our Water! The novel got an industrious number of four star ratings. I wanted it to be good and I’m sure that somewhere out there, something is. But I draw my own conclusions. Group think is for others.
Would I review? Interesting question. Style-wise the Mars Invaded tale was more direct, the Steal Our Water text felt a more mechanical trudge. Ultimately the answer has to be no. I get direct, but the story has to stand up. Why review something that hasn’t been properly edited? But hey! That sounds like I’m sneering. I’m not. I’m merely making the point that cartoon narratives are okay for some, but those who demand more can hardly be expected to take them seriously. This is the kind of nonsense Plato railed against in his (lobotomised) critique of writing. On the other hand, someone’s gotta service that market; good luck to ‘em, I say. It’ll keep mainstream publishers honest.
I now split indies down into Self-pubbers and Indies. Self-pubbers, are on the base of the pyramid and do the bare minimum to finish product. The result is draft quality. Whether poorly written, poorly finished or derivative, it could be better. It’s product, it’s pumped out and e-book marketing wheezes do generate sales, regardless of quality. Wheezes game the system but get found out. Self-publishers take note, traditional methods of publishing involve alpha / beta readers, edits / restructures, & proofreads for a reason. Do-it-yourself flies in the face of focus on your strengths. This writer has dabbled in all these; but the old adage applies, concentrate on your strengths. By comparison, indies go the extra mile to give a bit more to the discerning reader.

Bringing us to sales figures. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a significant proportion of e-sales is from self-pubbers who, by definition, don’t feature in industry estimates of activity. My thanks go to the dudes on Author Earnings who put in the effort to whack this out (yep including you, Data Guy). On one level their conclusions may not be comfortable reading but you have to realise they’re harvesting data from the absolute base of the publishing pyramid; the base by number of titles, authors and quality. Of course not all that stuff will be trash; but if top genre sellers are self-evidently crap, it kind of crystallizes things.
It’s no big surprise that industry sales figures ignore these – they’re hard to estimate and they represent a market which they holds little interest to them, beyond the cannibalisation of their own, better written but still cheap, trashy offerings.
Out of interest I downloaded the spreadsheet to see if I could spot one of my books.
Stat time. Three of my ten plus books are on Kindle (I’ve withdrawn experimental stuff). Sales figures are interpolated so I couldn’t use those.
I plumped on date of publication + genre. No luck.
Not to worry, the principle is fairly sound – I do spreadsheets for a living and the interpolations look reasonable.
The conclusions however are self-serving. Is that a big deal? Well if enough shout out “The Sky is Falling!” some will be panicked. Publishers, by and large, have a functioning business model – the requirement for a steady hand on the tiller still holds. Where does that leave us? The same place, albeit with a more nuanced appreciation of the here, the now and the future.
Heigh-ho, enough of that.



Strategy Point – What can Traditional Publishers do?
Writers shouldn’t be expected to understand business strategy, product development and unique selling point, but it’s reasonable to suggest that the writer who wants to develop his art and leave behind old, worn plot devices, instinctively understands this. In the context of current technological changes, the publishers who resist become architects of future failure.
Failure doesn’t need to be planned and you can’t go back.
Milking a market (cash cow) only works while other things remain equal. In an economic sense, mass-market low-brow stuff has been long overdue for a sort out.
So what can traditional publishers do? Specialisation is part of the answer. A stable of stable of authors willing to embrace change is also good. Authors that this writer has spoken to, have expressed frustration with a model which ties them to producing the same formulaic fiction, over and over again. They are controlled by a couple of levers: the contract, and the financial justification offered by the publisher. They are told what to write.
Serving niche markets well, is also good. In general, those with a grasp of strategy will be better placed to size up the lay of the land; the rest will have to make do with imitation – that is pretending there is something unique and worthy in their writing stable. This brings to mind groups of well-organized, like minded self-pubbers who give each others’ works three and four star ratings – a kind of extended sock-puppet family. Eventually they get found out.

Do Publishers really need to understand Business (their business) and other non-Arty things like Strategy?
The answer to that isn’t necessarily obvious. Boutique press, Specialist press and those set up to deliver a specific project – e.g. via POD (print-on-demand); aren’t always driven by commercial considerations. The object there is to do the work and be done. The trigger point to determine this is: does the publisher have to generate a profit / surplus, or not.
Money clouds the issue both ways; a publisher seeks to maximise earnings / minimise losses; successful writers like to grab a larger share of their success.

The End Game
While we’re talking strategy, how about the end game? (A business narrative ). Amazon has recently secured a deal with one of the big hold-outs Hachette – the terms are irrelevant; the fact is there is a deal against which conduct can be compared, leaving Amazon free to crush the small fry. Once this is under control, Amazon will be free to concentrate its power on getting a more favourable deal; at which point they’ll discover a technical snag that will make renegotiation necessary. i.e. we’ve more clout so it’s time for change ☻.


E-Pulp
Market Segments / Publishing

Tomorrow’s Brave New World Beckons.

Amazon Rant
The activities of the likes of Amazon are a bit of a worms’ nest. They headline a 70% royalty rate for authors; and as deal sweeteners, allow promotions such as Countdown andFree Book. There are catches. The 70% applies to product between $3 and $9.99; thus distorting pricing. Any price you set is manipulated by Amazon according to hidden algorithms. Go back after a week, or a month and the price you set has moved. You’ve done nothing; that’s Amazon’s work. The $3 and $9.99 are trigger points for countdownand free book. If the price of your book drifts outside them, Amazon welches on your deal. For example you set your book price at $3.00. Nice round figure. Later you plan acountdown deal for it. Days pass. The deal period begins, you check your product; it’s not in countdown. Why? The price has dropped to $2.92 but you’ve changed nothing. Amazon don’t let you rebook that deal; your deal-credit is used up.
Hmm.
Outside the $3 – $9.99 band, author royalty rate declines to 35%. Amazon get 30% and the middle-man is pruned. What does that mean? This is classic PR. The question begged is: What are Amazon doing for their 30%?
let me see – alpha / beta reading services? nope
editing / restructuring / proof reading? nope
author PR? only if you use their tools (bring your own schedule).
Oh wait there’s an electronic marketplace.
So the middleman is pruned? Hmm

Classics on the Cheap
Literary repute. How easily acquired? What are the economics of offering Classics for free on an iDevice. The argument: cannibalise physical book sales as an inducement to lock in target audiences appears compelling until it dawns on you that, despite the rhetoric, digital is only ever loaned. When the iDevice goes kaput, so does your copy. Cue long debate about self-IDing and technology (thus ploughing the furrows of SF ).
To dwell on the contribution of those long-ago authors – e.g. Aristotle & Plato were pretty much the founders literary theory – cheap or freely acquired literary rep seems a one-sided equation, especially by organisations perceived as greedy. Could e-distributors or publishers put something back into the pot? What if things were balanced out? How cool would it be if the founders of literary theory were appropriately recognised. A gesture such as a column or a bust in Athens is well off the radar in this day and age, but could have huge clout —something for the idea people to dwell on.

E-Distributors
What could e-distributors do? For example: metrics on new, unsigned writers could inform agents / publishers of promising talent…
Writers with paying publishing deals, face a different dynamic. Toying with self-publish risks their current arrangements, which pretty much locks them in. Do they stay hopeful and compromise their art after struggling to get: first an agent, then a deal?

Questions for the publisher
What is my model for acquiring / growing talent?
Maybe I don’t want to grow talent.
Maybe I see new, successful self-pubbers and my eyes light up. Ready made cash-cows. Just air-lift into a mutually beneficial, money spinning deal.
Initiative, but what’s the cost. Are artistic objectives deprecated?

Questions for the nervy author
Do I trial my own publishing arrangements? Do I make my own publishing decisions?
The author has experience of how the publishing process works to suppress his creative force. Yet he has to handle the process from draft to completion. How? Most self-pubbers don’t bother.

Questions for the new author
Do I trial my own publishing arrangements? Do I make my own publishing decisions? How far do I push the envelope? Stick or Twist?
The new have other choices. Tread the long trail of agent / publisher with its small odds of success. Step into mindless, grey repetition?

Ultimately I suppose it’s where you pitch your tent

Where are we now?
From Magic Realism to Magic Cartoons in one easy step, or
Please give a big hand to the return of the Pulp Era.
Let’s make that e-Pulp.

Conclusion
Publishers need to up their game (still).


jiz Le’acia, xeno-archaeologist


On Self Publishing
Self-Publishing boils down to self-promotion plus mechanics. If you don’t care to big up your own work, you aren’t self-promoting. The mechanics of self-publishing are a time-sink but they’re useful for learning the ropes.
Bigging up your own work is a mixture of skill and luck whose ultimate objective is to influence ranking and get reviews. Ranking + Reviews = Sales. The ether is full of snake-oil masquerading as tips; few make it work. It’s as well to note that some skills blur into darker areas; Amazon’s metrics can and have been ‘gamed’. Amazon’s message boards show how heavy-handed they’ve been in attempting to weed out tricks. Reviews power sales. There’s a whole industry geared to reviewing Indie books ranging from sock puppetry to sympathetic reviews by teams of like-minded writers. With a few four stars under the belt, group mentality sets in which is how we get sparkling reviews of tripe. Amazon has automatic processes to weed out the various abuses… which tells you just how severe the problem is.




The Fantastic Mixed with the Mundane. Call it SF.
This genre has moved from technology driven, solution based themes, to pastiche. The ideas in early SF were often implausible but good storytelling often carried the day. Most of that early stuff is now a ‘fail’ due to poor characterisation.
In principle, I could find the social side of pastiche appealing; in practise, this doesn’t happen. Is pastiche bad? What I’ve read doesn’t enthuse me. I expect difference, realistic social commentary & extrapolations…. I’ve read earlier stuff and I’ve seen what can be attempted, and done. I expect more.
Is it enough to critique? No. To mangle a metaphor, put your words where your mouth is. SF is a core mentality with which to examine different facets of our world.

This writer’s interests, in no particular order, are History, Eastern Mysticism, Classical Greek Philosophy, Myths & Folk Tales, Fantasy, Science Fiction and American Comic Books.
In another life, he does Business Strategy, Finance and Other Stuff.

* [damn those hyperlinks] 400,000 words.
Originally blogged 24/04/2015.

I've always trusted the publishing industry to know what they are doing. They've been at it for quite a while and I have no idea why they would seek to find benefit in either denial or suppression of the numbers.

I would agree that it all has a lot to do with the data.

But I would suggest that when you talk about the e-books that range in price from 0 to 2.99 US, then you might want to consider that this data, though important, might be the beginning of a look at a whole different market. What might support this, and seems to be missing from the data is an actual dollar comparison between the years. There might be some of that in there, but it seems more a comparison of numbers across the whole for each year; when, in fact, there is no comparison between the dollars involved in the 50 percent of traditional publishing current, to the dollars throughout the the whole of several previous years. If those numbers show a marked decline then I'm sure there would be a lot of response from the traditional industry. Without a good comparison it is difficult to say how much of that other half might be a whole market of people who have fewer dollars to spend on books and some who may never have spent money on books before. In other words, once again this could be a whole separate market.

And this could be a market that somehow can tolerate e-pulp or any pulp for that matter.

The first thing you should look at is that the quality of traditional publishing hasn't changed; but, in fact, there are times that various markets change and even traditional publishers might on occasion delve into a bit of pulp. So e-pulp isn't necessarily the result of self publishing.

In the past the trend has been to go with what sells and sometimes this causes a glut in specific areas that result in damage to some of the publishers who can't survive the backlash. This has always been predicated on the notion that they all have about the same amount of initial investment and when things go poorly then the ones who get the least return on investment either drop out of that market or suffer severe loss. Throughout their pricing structure has stayed the same so the general market stays fairly close to their predictable numbers. Even those that would delve into pulp would still follow this model.

With e-publishing the whole landscape shifts.

The initial investment stays the same for traditional publishers because nothing has changed to make the hardbound and trade paperbacks any less pricey and so their model for their e-books has stayed within that realm.

For the self publisher, depending on how much they want to spend to go in this direction, there is less of the chance that the old self regulating system of publishing will apply; except for those authors who try to follow the traditional model and have their work maintain the highest quality.

With the potential for a large number of people who can't afford to spend a lot getting involved that means that there is always the potential for e-pulp because anyone can-for practically no investment-publish books; as many as they want; at whatever price they want; with whatever quality they choose. Even if they make nothing off these books, the only investment is their time and as long as they have time on their hands there is likely no reason to quit. Sure, if they don't make any money at it , they may need to get a day job again and that might slow them down.

But some of them have made money at this and are making money at this and that might mean that there is a market for e-pulp.

Still and regardless of what the market is, the new model doesn't work the way the old model worked because once again the only investment the author has in some cases is their time; and some of these would be using that time writing anyway if they were trying to break into the traditional market. With more people coming into the market-it's already saturated, and that hasn't stopped the flow.

In the past the saturation would begin the backlash for traditional publishing and everyone would start to suffer.

With cheap to market e-book publishing that only matters to the numbers that are sold, but the author can warehouse these with no personal loss, for as long as he wants. It's not something that will go away unless Smashwords and Amazon and several other outlets for the Self publishers fold up or start charging the authors to use their services.

So the question becomes one of how does this affect the Traditional Publishers?

This could end up being: not at all. If they continue doing what they do best, there is still a market for their books and the quality that they insure. The big question seems to be will or would they bring their price structure down to the level of Self publishing. That would only happen if they decided they wanted a piece of that market. A bigger question when one considers the payback to the author might be will they, in fact, have to increase the price of books to be able to draw more authors toward their model. Presently there doesn't seem to be a dearth there so I don't think it will happen soon.

If the traditional publishers are not worried about present circumstance does that indicate a blind eye or perhaps an industry that has always kept its finger on the pulse of the consumer.

Perhaps the bigger question that should be looked at is, what would happen if the traditional publishers decided they wanted a piece of the pie that resides in that shady area of pulp fiction that is being so generously filled by Self publishing.

If you are worried about quality then I would guess that you should worry when and if they ever decide to go there.

tinkerdan said:

I've always trusted the publishing industry to know what they are doing. ...
If you are worried about quality then I would guess that you should worry when and if they ever decide to go there.

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Hi tinkerdan. You make some good points. The snag for the publishing industry is how to deal with the big ebook channel - Amazon. The logic of hype runs contrary to the logic of managing business risk. It's possible for some of the publishers to make mistakes that lead to their demise. There are signs it is happening in a business sense (in my other life I do strategy & business modelling - I'm a management accountant). Is it bad or good? it's neither, just processes. Think conveyor belts; some lead to the rubbish tip of business failure; others lead to fragile, hollowed-out business structures. Catch the wrong one and, well, there may be no good choices... that's part of the narrative about where we are going as a species... which I get as a long time reader of Science Fiction and as an observer of History.

On quality. It's up to publishers to make business decisions. A product = fail, where blurb + first page = . If it's why buy? I've read my 'full fill' of formulaic fiction. I'm jaundiced, I'm prejudiced, because I expect better. Is the the customer always right? or the critic? It certainly got me . At a business level, quality is about market segments, or horses for courses.

And as you all but say, it really is up to publishers to choose their fates.

I'm not a management accountant-but I've had front row seats to a number of business failures. It takes extreme myopia to fail when dealing with a business that has been around for a long time with a good model and it usually is isolated to one or a few businesses when dealing with an industry and rarely do you see the entire industry go belly up.

The complain though, is one of quality-perceived- and though you and I are important as a consumer we do not define the entire block of consumer interests and I think our individual needs are an issue at hand here that can be quantified this way. (We would love to say we represent the majority; but it's not always that way.) Add to this that the industry has always failed to meet my specific requirements I realize I should never use that as a harbinger of something bad about to happen; it's just the same old same old. I've always had trouble filling my dance card until e-pulp came out. I'm not going to say that e-pulp is all good quality; but it's not all bad quality and there are enough diamonds in the rough to make up for the shortcomings of the traditional publishers output vs price model.

Sure you can expect better; but I ask what you use as a measure. I've been reading for around 50 years in SFF and have never seen a time when there has been quality everywhere. The big 5 have always had a good portion and even a few of the niche marketed imprints have given us barrels full but there is always dross in the mix. Often that's been regulated by how many of the cream of the crop authors can keep up and how much demand there is and to what extent the publishers go to fill that demand.

The fact that many of the books I wouldn't look twice at seem to do quite well without me is a good measure that I don't represent the majority of readers in SFF

tinkerdan said:

The fact that many of the books I wouldn't look twice at seem to do quite well without me is a good measure that I don't represent the majority of readers in SFF

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Well said. I feel the same way, which is why I don't complain about what is and isn't available from big publishers. I think that people who join online forums and exchange opinions with each other get the idea that they and those who agree with them represent a much larger portion of the market than they actually do. Those of us whose tastes don't match most of what is being published simply have to make up our minds to look harder to find what we want. "Look inside" features for books on Amazon, samples that can be downloaded for Kindle or other reading devices, make this a lot easier. Libraries are also good for discovering new authors that we are going to like (some of whose books we will, it is to be hoped, be buying in the future).

Teresa Edgerton said:

exchange opinions with each other get the idea that they and those who agree with them represent a much larger portion of the market than they actually do

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The social media echo chamber syndrome.

Teresa Edgerton said:

Libraries are also good for discovering new authors

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Or Free bins outside Charity shops for the seriously cash strapped.

Teresa Edgerton said:

Those of us whose tastes don't match most of what is being published simply have to make up our minds to look harder to find what we want. "Look inside" features for books on Amazon, samples that can be downloaded for Kindle or other reading devices, make this a lot easier. Libraries are also good for discovering new authors that we are going to like (some of whose books we will, it is to be hoped, be buying in the future).

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How hard, I wonder? I dread the prospect of venturing into unknown book zones… The only SF book I've recently thought of buying is Susan's "Oracle," and that's basically because in the areas I frequent it's been mentioned a lot and sounds great.

Really though there is nothing wrong with a little pulp; I like it with my orange juice. It adds a certain texture to the freshness illusion. So e-pulp might be the stuff of more natural fresh feel, without the strained homogenization of the usual fiction fare.

tinkerdan said:

Sure you can expect better...

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Fair comment. My measure is quite simple, I want to be entertained. The fact that I've seen x, y and z themes done to death, is part of my internal dialogue when browsing. Doubtless if I'd never read yesteryear's greats, I'd be happy with more recent stuff.
Favourite authors include Dick, Heinlein, Zelazny. Dick is much bigger now than then. Heinlein's storytelling was good. He could have made serious money if he'd done Detectives. Zelazny did the exotic and the subtle well, sugar-coated in direct, action-oriented narrative. Heck, if I could write like any of those...

Stephen Palmer said:

How hard, I wonder?

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It's not hard for me, because my local libraries carry a goodly amount of SFF and they have new book sections, where I can just go and say "I'll take this one, and this one." I realize not everyone is so fortunate in the libraries that are near to them.

If one doesn't have a Kindle or similar reading device, you can still get the Kindle app for your computer and download samples. You don't have to go ahead and actually buy the book fror Kindle if you like the sample, you don't even have to buy the book from Amazon. But it is a way of using Amazon to browse through books as you would in a bookstore, only in the comfort of your home, and with a much, much wider selection. And Amazon will use your browsing history to suggest other books that you might like -- often far from the mark, but generally there are a few books of potential interest there. Also in the feature that tells what readers who bought a book that interests you have also bought. And for all of these you can look at the descriptions and read the reviews, and then either order some of those books that interest you through your library, or buy them from whatever source you use to buy new books.

Online bookstores also tend to carry the books by self-published authors that you can't find in bricks-and-mortar bookstores.

(And if we are looking to encourage more variety in what is published, buying new books from new-to-us-authors or encouraging our libraries to buy them, is essential. If we depend too much on used books, we are not only limited to what other people bought, but to books they may not even have liked very much. I don't say to avoid used-book stores and charity shops altogether, but if we want to see new authors, new directions in fantasy, and small presses that will publish the books we want to read but the big publishers won't touch, we have to spend some of our money in such a way that they get the benefit of it.)

And Stephen, I seem to remember that you have no prejudice against YA books, where I've found more variety than I have in adult fantasy. Of course you have to push past all the vampire-romance series to find the good books, but they are definitely there.

One could almost look at writing the same as music::

Terence Park said:

Fair comment. My measure is quite simple, I want to be entertained. The fact that I've seen x, y and z themes done to death, is part of my internal dialogue when browsing. Doubtless if I'd never read yesteryear's greats, I'd be happy with more recent stuff.
Favourite authors include Dick, Heinlein, Zelazny. Dick is much bigger now than then. Heinlein's storytelling was good. He could have made serious money if he'd done Detectives. Zelazny did the exotic and the subtle well, sugar-coated in direct, action-oriented narrative. Heck, if I could write like any of those...

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::Everything is a variation on themes. I would suspect that you have done what I did. Fifty some years ago I started reading science fiction and within the first twenty years I saturated and felt that there was nothing new. So for ten years I read less and tried to search out the most unique fiction I could find, until I realized (when going back to reread my old favorites) that I might have just been blind to the fact that it all is mostly variation on theme and that what I really found the most enjoyable about reading was the characters and the narrative voice, which are the one element that constantly changes. Since then I've returned to the enjoyment that I lost for all those years.

Teresa Edgerton said:

If one doesn't have a Kindle or similar reading device, you can still get the Kindle app for your computer and download samples. You don't have to go ahead and actually buy the book fror Kindle if you like the sample, you don't even have to buy the book from Amazon.

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Hmm, I didn't know that! May have to give it a try... but will it be Mac friendly?

Teresa Edgerton said:

And Stephen, I seem to remember that you have no prejudice against YA books, where I've found more variety than I have in adult fantasy. Of course you have to push past all the vampire-romance series to find the good books, but they are definitely there.

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I love YA, and often find YA books much better reads than 'adult' ones. With YA you have to focus on plot and character and then more plot, with no waffling... That's great for authors, but also for readers!

Stephen Palmer said:

Hmm, I didn't know that! May have to give it a try... but will it be Mac friendly?

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My husband got it for our Mac before either of us had a Kindle, and I think he found it easy to use.

Teresa Edgerton said:

If one doesn't have a Kindle or similar reading device, you can still get the Kindle app for your computer and download samples. You don't have to go ahead and actually buy the book fror Kindle if you like the sample, you don't even have to buy the book from Amazon. But it is a way of using Amazon to browse through books as you would in a bookstore, only in the comfort of your home, and with a much, much wider selection. And Amazon will use your browsing history to suggest other books that you might like -- often far from the mark, but generally there are a few books of potential interest there. Also in the feature that tells what readers who bought a book that interests you have also bought. And for all of these you can look at the descriptions and read the reviews, and then either order some of those books that interest you through your library, or buy them from whatever source you use to buy new books.

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I'm pretty new to Kindle but I must say this is the feature I like the best! It is like browsing in a bookstore, only much easier on the feet.

Teresa Edgerton said:

"Look inside" features for books on Amazon...

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I've had a Kindle for a couple of years and I've also got the PC app. It's fine for what it is; an essential component if you don't (or can't) get out and about. Do I read stuff on it? No. I know people that do.
It, along with other changes to our socio-economic model, is helping hollow out libraries and independent bookshops; their day is almost done thus kiboshing the normal channels for books with a local interest (something I've direct experience of). I've nothing against the Kindle, but like many technologies, it comes with a high-level dependency i.e. at a civilisational level. I love them doom-laden gloom-mongering predictions.

You can say whatever bad or negative you want about Kindle or e-books in general; but I know that I read about ten times as much as I used to, with a much higher comprehension; so I won't give up my kindle and kindle app until they come up with the next step.

I've never used libraries that much so I don't feel the least as though I'm taking anything away from them.

I still buy paper books. Especially when the book is only two or three dollars more in paper than it is for Kindle. And I don't think I spend any less time in libraries now then I did before. I love our local libraries. But with transportation an issue right now, it is nice to buy books without leaving the house, and like tinkerdan I buy many more books now than I did before. Where I might have reread something already on my bookshelves for the tenth or eleventh time, I am likely to buy something for my Kindle instead, because I can afford it.

Putting my business hat back on:
A review of 2014 from book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan shows that the adult fiction market was £321.3m. Five years back, in 2009 (when I started writing ) it was worth £476.16m. This means that print sales of adult fiction have declined by over £150m since 2009 and ebooks are taking an increasingly large bite out of the market.

Back in January this year, Bookseller’s editor Philip Jones said, “The ebook has quite demonstrably hit the commercial end of the fiction market. Almost any drop in adult fiction sales can mainly be put down to the migration to digital, which is obviously still continuing. I think that what we are seeing is booksellers becoming much more sensible about what they put on their shelves. Obviously if you can’t sell 20,000 copies of a commercial fiction title, you need to put something else out there, so we’re seeing all over that areas of the market such as graphic novels are getting more shelf space, as booksellers learn what readers want to buy in print.”
The Guardian (which is of course, green ), Jan 13th, 2015

You need more information because these things go in cycles and are greatly affected by such things as Amazon jumping into the e-book market. Consumers are fickle; even if sometimes there are good reasons for that nature. Show us the info for the ups and down throughout the last 50 years so we can see what the usual trend is and then come back to this piece of information and put it into perspective along with the changing value of the dollar or pound and bring it into focus.

Tagged off like this it looks alarming and we haven't even discussed what the initial impact on growth, of ebooks was from the inception of e-books and the Kindle and epub readers.
from wiki::
electronic paper was incorporated first into the Sony Librie (released in 2004) and Sony Reader (2006), followed by the Amazon Kindle, a device which, upon its release in 2007, sold out within five hours.::

So the question becomes one of how much of an impact from 2004/6 to 2009 the new device had on the old market and how much became the new market and what the dollars were prior to that compared to the dollars in 2009.

There is a lot in the larger picture left out of these numbers.

We are not yet left the novelty phase. Most people don't appreciate the difference between an app on an LCD or AMOLED tablet and dedicated eInk readers, the real platform for keen readers. The reader apps are for casual readers.
The market isn't mature yet because most people that have bought a paper book ever have not yet bought an eBook and many people that have bought eBooks don't appreciate the differences in the consumption platforms. Of course lots of people are perfectly happy to read an eBook on a phone. So eBooks are on a broader range of platforms than printed (Real bound HB, glued HB, trade paper back, mass market paper back etc).

So the market can be unstable. What if a subsidised by book sales Mirasol technology eBook reader was released?
What if Amazon did a Kindle eInk version reader for $25?