ThomasLitchford

Apparently, according to this New York Times article on the 2007 Book Expo America, all is not well in the world of bookselling. Authors are giving away their books online for free:

“Giving an author’s book away for nothing on the Web as a way to market books seems a mirage to me,” Ms. Brown wrote in an e-mail message after the lunch. “All it does is feed the hungry angles of journalists and bloggers who plunder it without any of the author’s context or nuance and makes the reader feel there is nothing new to learn from the genuine article when it finally limps on its weary way to a book shop.”

They’re selling books themselves:

Vivien Jennings, president of Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kan., railed against authors who link from their Web pages to Amazon.com or even sell autographed copies of their books directly to consumers. “We host a lot of book signings,” Ms. Jennings said. Authors who sell their own books “are particularly hurtful to us.”

Tech companies are digitizing books left and right. On Demand Books is marketing the Espresso Book Machine, which can print a soft cover book in five minutes. And people are finally starting to read books off gadgets like Sony’s E Reader and PDAs.

“I think there is going to be a lot of sturm and drang before we figure this out,” said Eamon Dolan, editor in chief of Houghton Mifflin. “There is a huge undertaking ahead. It is going to be rocky.”

Whatever are we going to do? All we can do is innovate. And write and publish the best books possible.