My writing week 3 (31)

Hi all,

Back to ebooks this week. It seems that publishers might lose control of ebooks quicker than they thought according to last week's Bookmarks column in the Saturday Age. It said that agent Andrew Wylie has made exclusivity deals with Amazon, cutting out both publishers and other ebook sellers. In effect Wylie has set himself up as a publisher.

I wonder how Wylie will feel when authors start cutting their agents out of ebook deals and doing it themselves, after all, if Amazon, Google, Apple dominate as the seller and pay the same royalties to everyone, what point is there of having an agent for an ebook? And when ebooks dominate the publishing industry in a few years time, what relevance will agents have?

It has been a month since I checked the prices charged for the Kindle bestselling top 100. Last time I was surprised at the demise of the $2 ebook and again I found none in the top 100. Last time there was a massive increase in free ebooks, accounting for a third of those on the list, 35 were free this time. Eighteen of those were classics. Most of the others seemed to be romance. Last time there were 16 selling from $2.01 - $3.50, this time there were none. The cheapest few were $4.60. The majority of the rest of the ebooks were from $8.99 to $12.99.

So the market seems to be polarising, free or $8.99 to $12.99. I wonder if this has changed the business plan of many ebook authors who were/are selling their ebook for $2. Perhaps a lot of readers suspect a $2 ebook, anticipating them to be badly edited or self-published. Maybe authors/publishers are finding $2 to be uneconomical and are increasing the price. Or a lot of consumers might already have declared their intention of never paying for an ebook, not even $2. One reason for some of the free ebooks would be people testing their devices to see if the download works.

I finished reading the excellent thriller/horror/apocalyptic novel Red Queen by Aussie H.M. Brown. A review is pending.

My novella has only grown slightly over the past week.

Graham.

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