Beyond THE FUTURE: ONE SISTER’S SONG Now a Kindle E-Book

It’s always fun to have news to report about my first novel, especially since my second novel seems to be in a perpetual revisions stage. One of my recent projects with Pearl Street Publishing has been to transfer One Sister’s Song to a file that could be uploaded as an e-book to Amazon’s Kindle. After some considerable effort on the part of my notably non-techy brain, today the digital version of One Sister’s Song went live on the Kindle store site, where it now can be purchased for a whopping eight dollars.

Despite the lower price point of e-books versus print copies, the lack of costs associated with producing e-books will make digital sales ultimately more profitable for small publishers and their authors as well as for self-published authors. Some day the cost of the Kindle itself will go down so more folks with any interest can enter the era of the e-book and benefit from the device’s nifty quick downloading and comprehensive search capabilities. For now, Amazon has run out of Kindles following a holiday rush. I find the fact that more than a few happy book lovers received a Kindle this holiday season encouraging, not only for the potential future of my own book but for the future of self-published and small indie press titles of all sorts, titles that deserve more chances to be read than the traditional business model for publishing and selling books can possibly provide.

Electronic books will never replace old-fashioned books for me (especially those in my small collection of signed first editions…I cherish the memories of having some of those books signed as much as I cherish the books themselves). I love everything about reading books (including the ability to toss one across the room when I’ve had enough of it...somehow I don’t think that would work so well with a Kindle). But I also remember working at a huge book distributor in a previous life before kids and e-mail and the Internet, back when no one imagined or wished e-books would ever take off. And yet, here we are. Will digital completely replace print publications some day? I certainly hope not, but it’s exciting to finally be directly involved in this techy version of book publishing we’ve all been hemming and hawing about for so long. Meanwhile as an author, I love knowing a certain book that’s been near and dear to my heart for the last 15 years (my book! woohoo!) can now be shared with more readers than ever. Simply put, that feels pretty good.