E-Books and Print Books - The Eternal Debate

By Marie Tuhart

There's been a lot of talk over the last few years about E-Books and if they're real books or not. I don't believe the debate will ever be settled.

There are good e-books and bad e-books, the same can be said for print books. You'll find bestsellers where the editing on the book was not properly done, the same goes for an e-book. Does it make the book any less a book? No, it doesn't.

E-books are beginning to make a good showing, with new e-readers hitting the market (Amazon's Kindle and Kindle 2 being the most recent), reading an e-book is becoming easier.

The publishing industry is evolving and the publishers are starting to realize that they need to give the consumer a choice: print or e-book. There are many consumers that will never give up their print books, and there are other's that love reading a book on their cell phone, PDA or an e-reader.

One of the arguments I hear all the time is that e-books don't make money. Well, while that can be true, the same can be said for a print book. Authors are more responsible for marketing and promoting their own books today, than in any time in the past. The more you promote your book the more sales you're likely to make.

On an e-book there is usually no advance, some e-publishers are now giving advances, and royalties are 35%-50% on each book. With a NY publisher on an e-book, there could be an advance, royalties are 8%-15%, even with a print book your royalties are from 4%-8%.

So let's look at some numbers (these are based on an average of $6.00 a book and an advance for a first time author of $1,000).

E-Book Numbers:

No advance in most cases

Approximate cost of a novel length book $6.00 at 35% royalty, the author receives $2.10 per book

To earn $1,000 the author has to sell approximately 476 books

Print Book Numbers:

$1,000 advance

Approximate cost of novel length book $6.00 at 6% royalty, the author receives .36 cents per book.

That means the print author would have to sell 2,777 books to earn back the $1,000 advance, the print author sees nothing until they payback that advance.

Looking back at the E-Book author, if she sold 2,777 books that would earn her $5,832.

Even with the NY publishers starting to do e-books, at 15% royalties, if there is an advance of $1,000 the author would have to sell 1,111 books to payback their advance.

An e-book author would only have to sell 476 books to payback the same $1000 advance.

Money is not always the bottom line for some authors, this is an example of how money can affect an author. An author makes their choices on what they feel is important. Many e-publishers offer authors a home for their books that NY is not read to tackle yet. While the lines are starting to blur a bit, there are still areas that NY will not touch.

E-books are not for everyone, just a print books are not for everyone. Consumers are making their choices and so are writers. NY is playing catch up with e-books and they don't fully understand e-books yet. Now, this isn't every publisher, some publishers understand it very well and are learning quickly how to keep both print and e-book readers happy.

Don't dismiss an author just because they've published with an e-publisher, they are no less an author than any other published author. Remember we were all readers before we were writers, and we're still readers.

We are all writers, readers and authors.