Saturday, March 14, 2009

GUEST BLOGGER LIZ JASPER

Wow, I had no idea how long it'd been since I'd posted, so it's my special pleasure to present Sisters in Crime member Liz Jasper as a guest blogger today. She's an award-winning mystery author and avid e-book reader, also blogging this month for the Go Green/Read E project of All Romance eBooks.

Last Saturday, sister mystery writer Dana Fredsti and I spoke at the Northern California Sisters in Crime meeting about electronic books. I write traditional curl-up-on-the-couch mystery e-books with vampires for Cerridwen Press, Dana writes smoking hot love stories for Ravenous Romance. Mostly we talked about our experiences from the publishing side, but one reader's comment from the audience surprised me.

We were ticking off some trends/observations about the e-book market--such as e-books, while still a relatively small fraction of books sold, are a huge growth market in the otherwise dismal world of publishing; e-publishers take risks on new authors whereas traditional publishers tend to be more conservative and trend-following in what they published; increasingly we were seeing traditionally published mystery writers' books having simultaneous hardcover and e-book releases – when someone in the audience said:

"Yeah, that's all well and good, and yeah, the e-book version might be half the price of a hardcover, but you have to buy something to read it on!"

Dana and I both blurted out in surprise, "No, you don't."

Dana said, "You can read them on your computer — and the software is free."

I added, "These days, you can pretty much read them on anything."


Which I admit isn't terribly helpful, if you've never read an e-book. It's a little like telling a kitchen novice moving into their first apartment that eggs are great to have on hand as you can cook than a million ways. Nonetheless, it's pretty much true. Sure, you can buy the Kindle 2 from Amazon and in something like ten seconds wirelessly download your selection from their 200,000 titles and read them on an energy efficient screen that is (says Business Week) "easy on the eyes." But you really can read e-books on just about any electronic device. Last week free software was released that turns your iPhone into a wireless "mini-Kindle."

Perhaps you, like me, don't have one of the many versions of dedicated e-book readers or an iPhone. But why not try an e-book anyway on what you do have? E-books are cheaper than if you bought the story in print and, as a bonus, they're environmentally friendly.

Side note: I admit I'm dying to hear from someone who has read a book on a regular one-inch cell phone screen, as I hear is possible. As much as I'm all for e-books, I can't help but think that's crazy. But then I remember Homer Simpson, who when he was in the ICU and saw someone on a ventilator said, (I paraphrase) "What? They make machines that breathe for you? And all this time I've been using my own lungs like a sucker?" You may find that reading on a one-inch screen, when your eyes don't have to move all that way like they would across a traditional page, to be remarkably restful.

Click here for Liz Jasper's Underdead mysteries and thousands of other e-books http:www.allromanceebooks.com.
Click for Liz's website http://www.lizjasper.com.
For the Go Green/Read project click http://www.gogreenreade.com.
Posted by Dee Ann Palmer 1:42 PM 2 Comments:

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