Candice Hughes

The Wall Street Journal listed 2 thrillers among the top 5 novels for 2009. These were The Lost Symbol (Dan Brown)  and The Associate (John Grisholm). The Lost Symbol was first place. Two of the top 5 have strong romance themes (The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger and The Guernsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows).

Both romance and thrillers can get you heart pounding and make you forget the dragging ecomony. Little wonder they’re popular!

Can’t wait to see what 2010 brings!

Bookmarked: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

E-books are expected to represent $150 million of this year’s book market, rising to $201 million next year (according to Albert Greco, professor at Fordham University as quoted by the Wall St. Journal). Two major publishers announced e-book delays (Hachette Book Group and Simon & Shuster). Only a couple years ago, e-books seemed like harmless dalliances. A way to look hip, to crest the techie wave. Now the wave is threatening a whole business model.

Fundamentally, e-books and their so far rock bottom prices represent a basic struggle between consumers (readers) who would like to pay as little as possible for a product (books) and producers (publishers and authors) who would like to earn a reasonable profit from their products. How far the model can stretch under these pressures is uncertain. Already consumers have access via the Internet to very low cost, even free, “books”. Frustrated authors post books on their web sites or give podcasts of them. Google has indexed libraries full of free books. But, no one is checking the quality of all this free written entertainment. That’s where the current model benefits consumers. Only an infinitesimally small number of books pass the extremely high hurdle to publication by a major publisher. To pay all the people who ensure this high quality entertainment, create a beautiful package and give consumers easy access to it, publishers need to earn a certain income with profit to keep shareholder’s happy so they can stay in business. If consumers do their part by keeping volume high, prices can be lowered. But low volume and low profit is an unsustainable business model. Are consumers willing to pick through mountains of chaff for gems in “free” Internet entertainment? Or are they willing to pay for quality?

In other words, how low can prices of e-books go before publishers (and authors) call it quits? The e-book medium offers so many enticing opportunities for enhanced content and other benefits that are worth paying for. If the focus can be moved from bargain basement to luxury entertainment, e-books may turn from Trojan horse to gift horse.