The main reason that I'm a largely digital-only author is that if I publish all my books on paper, I can't get them onto the shelves of physical bookstores. It's virtually impossible. Why? Because I'm an "indie author," meaning that I self-publish my work outside of the realm of the traditional publishing industry. Like it or not, traditional publishing largely controls what's on the shelves of brick-and-mortar bookstores. (Self-publishing my own work is a personal choice—for more about traditional versus self-publishing, see this post).
Also, I am an internationally-oriented author, and I have a large number of readers all over the world—in Australia, the UK, Europe, South Africa, Malaysia, Russia, India, the Middle East, etc. This compounds the distribution problem tenfold. Even the biggest U.S. publishers have trouble getting their titles onto the bookstore shelves in every corner of the globe.
Thanks to digital retailer/distributors like Smashwords, ebooks provide an instant and elegant solution to the problem. It's a great feeling to know that any reader, virtually anywhere in the world, has equal access to all my books at the touch of a button.
That said, I admit that it sometimes bothers me that I can't pick up a paper copy of some of my books and hold it in my hands, and that I can't send readers who want my books in paper format to a physical bookstore. Some people enjoy collecting paper books and building a home library, and I can certainly appreciate that as well.
While it's true that I could arrange to publish all of my 25+ titles on paper through a company like KDP, Lulu or Createspace, this does not fully solve the problem, neither in the USA or abroad. Readers will still have to order the books online or through their local bookstores—copies will still not actually be sitting on bookstore shelves. Many of the people who want paper books tell me they not only want my books in that format but want to go to their local bookstore and buy them off the shelf. Having to order and wait for a paper book is a "speed bump" that greatly lowers interest. Today, it's my experience that most readers, when given the choice of ordering a physical book and waiting a week or two for it to arrive, or downloading the book instantly, at 1/3 of the price (when you include postage), choose the latter. Not all, but most.
Despite how easy companies like Amazon KDP and others make it sound, publishing on paper is still a lot of work and takes significant time. I only have so many hours in the day. When I ask readers, "Which would you rather I do—produce more new ebooks and audiobooks or slow down and offer everything I write in both digital and paper format?" the answer is always a resounding "More new books please!" The vast majority of my readers are willing to read or listen to my books in digital format, even the ones who prefer paper.
Of course, there are some people who refuse to read anything but paper books. I admire their tenacity, but I have to draw the line somewhere. I believe that there will always be paper books, but I also believe that the number of people who refuse to read anything except paper books will steadily diminish, so that eventually I will reach 99% of the folks who are interested in my work.
But there is another larger, overarching factor in my decision to stay digital. I struggled for fifteen years in the paper book industry—burned through four literary agents—and made very little progress. It was the advent of ebooks and digital publishing that allowed me to take full control of my career and caused my book sales to take off. While I'm sure it would be a wonderful feeling to hold every one of my novels in my hands and see them lined up in a neat row along my desk, I'm confident that the feeling I have from having a significant part of my income derived from fiction writing, and hence more time to write, is far more satisfying.
Perhaps things will change in the future and I will decide to publish on paper. For example, maybe someday there will be a printing and binding machine sitting in every physical bookstore that can produce a high-quality paper copy of any ebook in a matter of minutes. There have been attempts at this, but nothing has caught on big yet. Or, maybe a traditional publisher will come along and offer to print my books as they are, without insisting on fiddling around with the titles and content, and they won't have a problem with me continuing to publish my ebooks and audiobooks independently. Who knows?
Never say never.
In summary, that's the logic behind my decision to keep many of my books in digital format only for the present, and it may or may not apply to your own situation.
Your comments are welcome!
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