Dear Reader, I need your help to answer
this question.
 |
I am in a quandary. For a year or so
now I have wanted to bring out Dernier Publishing books and booklets
in digital format – to join the e-book revolution. Not because I
love e-books, but because we are here to serve our customers and they
want them.
Our aim is to encourage and inspire
young people in their faith and show non-church kids what they are
missing – anything we can do to reach more young people has got to
be good, hasn't it?
Or has it . . . ?
Certainly going digital is essential.
If kids are reading digital books, we must provide them. So that's
not the issue; it's the format of the books which is giving me a
headache. Hence the title of the post . . . to Kindle or not to
Kindle.
Because it seems to me that there are
two choices:
E-pub format, or Kindle format.
There are pros and cons of both (unless
I have got this completely wrong, and do please tell me if I have).
The big plus of e-pub format e-books:
They can be sold anywhere, from any
website. We have control over where they are sold, which can include
bookshop websites – we are dedicated to supporting 'bricks and
mortar' bookshops where we can, although we must of course first and
foremost supply as many books as we can to as many children as we
can because this our reason for existence.
The big plus of Kindle format:
It is relatively easy to do – I can
do it myself. I could start this weekend and have a booklet up and
for sale by Monday. And if I make a mistake, the file can be edited
at any point . . . plus Amazon do all the sales. Simple!
Well, kind of simple. Because there are
cons with the Kindle model too.
Here are the two major problems as I
see it:
- We sincerely want to help high street bookshops in their struggle to survive (Kindle books are sold solely through Amazon)
- I don't like Amazon's monopoly on the market. I am also uncomfortable with their aggressive business philosophy of taking over the world, no matter how many shops (real people and livelihoods) they walk over in the process.
If we had the money and the resources
and the expertise, there's no doubt about it, we would go down the
e-pub route, where the e-books can be sold even by bookshops.
But, sigh, I'm increasingly veering
towards thinking just going for the Kindle right now, and work
towards making enough money to pay for resources and expertise to do
e-pub books in the future. Because we just don't have the money, time
or expertise to do e-pub books right now. Which is why we still don't have any e-books right now . . . and also means that we just
won't have e-books in the near future.
Please do feel free to leave feedback, I would be most gratefu.
With many thanks for your support,
Janet
How do children - or anyone else for that matter - access e-books? Is it a case of down loading onto a computer,ipad,iphone ... what? I guess the question is 'which would make the books most accessible to children of the age group you're mainly focusing on? I can't imagine reading to my grandchildren from a computer screen but a Kindle ...maybe!Is it possible to do some research through church schools.Could you run some sort of comp. asking the children what kind of electronic media they'd use to read one of your books - maybe an art. comp judged initialy in school? You've probably thought through most of that.Would be happy to brainstorm if it would help
ReplyDeleteHello Marion, many thanks for your thoughts. Parents and grandparents are now buying e-books for their children, increasingly so for the 8+ age group, for all sorts of different e-readers. Apparently they are excellent because they are instantly downloadable from anywhere in the world, font size can be changed for children who find reading more difficult, and they are convenient for holidays and car journeys. Appently some children prefer to read on their technology - we need to cater for this group! If we make our e-books available in Kindle format, that can be changed via free app to any other format. I have read a report that physical book sales increase with the availablity of the e-book, but that I will have to see - I hope so because we do want to keep supporting bookshops!
ReplyDeleteI would really recommend using Kindle publishing; here is my experience. I made my pre-school children's books available on kindle whilst I was searching for an illustrator who had the same vision and passion as I did. The books were all uploaded and available for purchase within a week and they sold and keep selling. From this has come requests for physical books and I am now finalising the illustrations and looking down the options for publishing. Amazon have many downsides, but in terms of getting the books to readers they can not be beaten.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for the age group; my daughter is (just) 7 and she reads all sorts of books on my kindle, on the computer and on my tablet computer. She has vision constraints and loves being able to make the font bigger for herself; she also feels very grown up using the same technology that I do to read. She still loves physical books; but they come from the libraries, all purchases come electronically now for her.
I hope that helps, good luck and God Bless.
Hello Emma, thank you so much for your comments, your experience is useful to know, both from the publishing point of view and from your daughter's point of view too. I really appreciate you taking the time to write :-)
ReplyDeleteMany thanks,
Janet