Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Kindles In Libraries

The wonderful CJ West hosted me on Book Talk Radio, you can catch the archived audio file here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/author-cj-west/2011/04/20/thriller-30-with-scott-nicholson

The big news in the book world is Amazon's announcement of a partnership with Overdrive to get Kindle books into libraries. It's unclear how that is going to affect writers (usually the last part of any business equation, the Afterthought of Books) but I believe it is going to help almost everyone--writers will be getting tax dollars, libraries will get a lot more content with their shrinking book budgets, and readers will have a virtually unlimited supply of reading material. The losers, of course, are those who want to sell their e-books for more than the price of a paper book. 

Savvy librarians stretching a budget are going to broaden their choices and seek out more writers. "Hmm, I can buy these 10 books for my patrons, or I can buy this one book. Whatever do I do?" And with 11,000 libraries buying books, if every indie writer in America sells one book to each library, that's a nice bundle of cash. We'll have to see how it plays out. I already have an accoiunt with Overdrive but their upload and distribution system is a little awkward. Hopefully, the Kindle will smooth things out for everyone and be big news for readers.


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3 comments:

Brenda Wallace said...

Thanks for sharing. Hadn't heard that big news. It does sound positive.

Nicholas La Salla said...

That's interesting! The effects that could have on libraries, and on reading in general, are massive.

Plus, what about due dates? ;-) Maybe we'll each get a couple cents for every day it's late?

Or maybe not. hahaha.

This could completely make the library as a tangible place irrelevant. You could download from the privacy of your home, much as you can do with the audiobooks on my local library's website.

Wow. Big news!

Nick
One More Day: A Modern Ghost Story

Author Scott Nicholson said...

Yeah, it's going to be tricky--I imagined people checking out devices with the books on them, but if you can download from home--the indie revolution may already be over!

Scott