It’s official, last week e-book sales surpassed those of paper based books for the first time.

The Financial Times (April 15, 2011 by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson) reported that in February 2011, e-books sales tripled reaching $90.3 million compared with adult paperback book sales of $81.2 million. That means 9.1 million more e-books were sold than paper back books.

The numbers also showed that in January and February, e-book sales increased 169% compared with a decrease of 24.8% in paper based book sales.

The trend looks firmly entrenched especially given the ever increasing types of devices that readers can now use to view e-books including new tablets as well as the Kindle, Nook and others. RIM just announced a new tablet to compete with the iPad and a Sony tablet.

These changes will ripple throughout the publishing industry and all book related organizations. Even libraries are struggling to keep up. My library just sold off their entire CD collection in a move to digital. One wonders if books are next and if so, how will libraries transform?

Any change is sure to be gradual. One road block is that Amazon allows only limited sharing of books on the Kindle. Thus libraries can’t share books for the Kindle currently.

Even if books are eventually primarily digital, I think libraries will survive because they are so much more than book lenders. My library, like many others, is a community hub. Students meet with tutors, citizens come to hear lectures by authors or attend computer training classes, or teens just hang out.

For authors these are roller coaster times. The challenge is to adapt to e-books. Yet still profit. Perhaps e-books can even improve profit for authors. Perhaps authors will simply be lost in a tsunami of content. It seems too early to tell. The exciting part is to be in early on change and hopefully to shape change into a helpful, rather than mischievous sprite.

If you earn money (or try to) as a freelance writer or blogger you may be frustrated by the generally low pay or even total lack of pay. Often writers are told, “You’re just starting out. This is an opportunity to get your name out there,” or “You’re building your platform.” However, the promised pay day never comes- there is no golden pot after months or years of toiling away. If you feel this way you’re not alone. And some of these writers and bloggers are now saying enough is enough and fighting the system.

Here are two news stories where writers are raising awareness of the pay (or lack of it):

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110412/ap_on_hi_te/us_aol_lawsuit

http://yhoo.it/h1z5jx

In the first link, a former Huffington Post blogger is suing the company for pay following the large amount reaped by the company in it’s recent sale. In the second link, a freelance writer started her own company to subcontract out writers at better pay.

If you want to be a professional (career) writer, pay is a must (being part of the base definition). Even the IRS distinguishes professionals from hobbyists by whether they are paid or at least attempt to find paying work. If you intend to write without pay, not only don’t you collect a paycheck to cover the bills but you won’t be able to take tax deductions either since you will be considered to be engaging in a hobby (ie: just messing around for fun).

Great news today! Three of my poems (Lying, Christina’s Reflection, and Troy) have been published at The Lyon Review. It’s always a lot of fun to see your work in “print” (or digital ink) after working so long and hard polishing the words. Just like spring, which arrived today in full force with purple crocus and 75 degree F weather, publication is the rebirth period for writers- the time you can relax for a few moments and say to yourself, “This is what I’ve been working for.” (Paychecks are also welcome, of course.)

The Lyon Review is a newly launched publication. I encourage you to click over to the site (link below) and take a look at the variety and quality of the work they’ve put together ranging from book excerpts to poetry and essays.

The Lyon Review can be enjoyed at: www.thelyonreview.com

That’s it for the pat on the back. (Happiness is fleeting, I know.) Back to work on my novels and other projects….

Yikes! It’s been awhile since I have been able to post, nose to grindstone and all that. Here we are nearly at the end of winter. It’s been a real New England winter this year. Snow so high my mailbox was nearly buried. We may be at the end of it now. Today it’s pouring rain and found myself early in the morning mucking about in boots and a Gortex parka, sloshing through slush and mud to let the water company guy check the meter. He said, “It’s really coming down.” I nearly answered, “Ahyup.” But being in a weird bit of New England that glows with the silver glitz of New York City shining on the horizon, I bit that back and just said, “Sure is.”

I found a great blog post on how rampant e-book theft is. This is a serious concern since e-books are the biggest growth area in publishing. It seems to me that all creative entertainment types need to band together and figure out a way forward (from music to movies to written-word story-tellers- can’t call us book authors much longer, I guess). I’ve been studying up on Intellectual Property law for my other project (working on technology transfer). Copyright law is both robust (anyone qualifies who has created a unique, creative work, no need to actually apply for anything) and weak (it takes money and time to enforce and how many creative types have either of these to spare?) It seems to me that greater protection needs to be worked out somehow so that creators can be fairly compensated for their work. Otherwise, the whole sandcastle crumbles. How many of us can afford to devote our days and nights to work for free for our muse? Sadly, muses don’t pay mortgages or grocery bills and royal patrons have been few and far between for the last several hundred years.

Take a look at this blog for another writer’s take on e-book theft: http://ow.ly/44g9g

Enjoy!

New England was blanketed in a deep snow (around 2 feet here in southern New England) this Christmas holiday- a relatively rare occurrence. It was exciting to watch (from behind a window in a snug warm house). This was a true Yankee blizzard with gale force winds whipping bits of ice through the air, tearing down tree branches and, for once, making the roads go quiet.

The rare sliver of quiet was ideal for baking cookies and for family reading on the couch. Which got me thinking about holiday books. Authors continue to release holiday books, which means they must sell. However, I’ve never been a fan of them. It seems too much like a school assignment, “What did you do over your holiday?” or “How does the holiday make you feel?”

To me, an author’s job is the same no matter what the day. Weave a story from air. The story burns in the dark like a candle. Feeding on oxygen. A delicate thing to be expanded or blown out.

Wishing all a Wondrous New Year!

According to a new article by AP writer Jill Lawless, Jane Austen was not a schoolmarmish grammarian. We all know how many of her books have been read and lovingly reread. So for all writers (myself included) whose eyes glaze over at the term “past participle” or who quiver as chalk scratches the blackboard underlining verbs as sentences are diagrammed, you can stop slouching in the back of your writing class and stand tall. You are not a fake. Even Jane Austen loved dialogue more than past participles.

Her story also shows how an editor/writer team can work together to shape a novel and craft a writer’s image. Some may argue that Austen’s original prose was superior to the subsequent polished works. There’s no way to go back and undo history. The books sold. Readers swooned. Years of adoration dubbed them masterpieces. Isn’t that the goal? Who can say which version is better?

Writers, stop biting your pencil tops over whether Owen was sleeping or letting sleeping dogs lie. Only fools trust talking dogs anyway.

Read more about Ms. Austen at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101023/ap_en_ot/eu_britain_jane_austen

Yes, it’s that time of year again…Banned Books Week. The Net is full of festivities. For example, visit the American Library Association for information, activities and souvenirs. http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm

However, as a recent Wall St. Journal article reveals, banned books may be the least of our worries. With the slow dissolution of the current system for bringing worthy novels and books to the public’s notice, there may be few books to ban. Books will join the maelstrom of “news”. There is now so much “news” with much of it of dubious origin and veracity that one is overwhelmed and in the end pays little attention to most of it. With the upsurge of e-books, novels and non-fiction are headed in a similar direction. E-books allow for a huge quantity of books (even those posted directly by authors), however, many are likely to be unvetted by professionals and of unknown quality. Even for e-books of excellent quality, breaking through the noise of all these newly available books will be extraordinarily difficult.

That’s the initial view. In the long run, many authors may rethink their dedication to story-crafting when they realize the rewards may be slim to none. According to the WSJ, e-books offer authors half or less of the money they make from hardcover books. At a revenue of only a couple dollars per e-book, with sales of debut authors being only a few thousand copies, it’s easy to see that devoting a few years (say 5,000 to 10,000 hours) to crafting a great story could easily yield anywhere from a dollar or so to pennies on the hour. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour so one can see writing, for debut or lesser known authors, could easily fall far below minimum wage.

The best solution is for authors to continue to press for fair prices for their work. Other more inventive solutions include moving to a low cost of living country or, sadly, ceasing to write. There’s the rub- with low wages, all books could essentially become banned as writers can no longer afford to write.

It felt a bit like peeking at my horoscope, which I admit I do once in awhile for a lark. I’m talking in this case about a writer’s mysterious black box- “I Write Like”. Everyone’s doing it, I thought, why not me?

So who do I write like (according to “I Write Like”)? Drum roll- envelope please. The answer is….JD Salinger.

Since he passed away, perhaps he won’t mind that I write like him. Particularly that I’m a woman who writes like a man who writes about what it’s like being a boy growing up to become a man. If that makes any sense at all.

Now I’d better go and begin scouting remote towns in New Hampshire for a cottage.

Because the frightening thing is that both JD Salinger and I have lived/worked in New York and Connecticut. But then he fled deep into New England to Cornish, New Hampshire. And I wonder if that is what “I Write Like” noticed- something in the Yankee words spiced with New York attitude. Then again maybe it’s just a mysterious black box like whatever generates the fortunes in Chinese fortune cookies.

Spring has been here for several weeks now, with the usual crazy New England weather- shorts and tee-shirts one week then back to sweaters and coats the next.

Besides the changing but consistently wacky weather, the publishing industry continues as well, changing but expectedly so.  Publisher’s Weekly reported that e-books were up 177% for 2009 while sales of most other books were flat or slightly lower than the year before. All forms of entertainment have been moving digital for a number of years. Yet things rarely move entirely digital or, if they do, convert in their original form. I still listen to the radio periodically. I often listen to the radio online. It’s still the radio, just a different delivery system. I envision paper-based books sharing the world with digital books- reaching an even larger audience.

Spring is a great time for writing- full of energy and bursting with ideas! So now it’s back to a writer’s main job…writing.

Bookmarked: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

In New England, we’ve had several spectacular snow storms this year. It makes up for several years running where we were barely dusted by an inch or two the whole season. Those years I heard many complaints about the cold, the snow, shoveling, grumble, grumble. I assumed those were all transplants from parts south or the extreme south west. I feared they might not survive the system shock when we had a real New England winter with a foot of snow whipped into a frenzy by howling winds.

If you get up early enough after one of these bruisers, you will be treated to a fairyland of sugar frosted trees against a bright blue sky. A perfect scene for a novel. I’ll have to think on that….

For now, here’s a photo- New England in winter.