The eBook Phenomena

There is a quiet revolution taking place in the book publishing world ... eBooks. All of us know that we can purchase electronic versions of just about any title and read them on your iPad, iPhone, Android and Kindle. Before I left for Venice in November, I purchased the Steve Jobs biography and read the entire 571 pages on my iPhone. It sounds like quite a feat, but not really ... it was quite enjoyable.

That brings me to my current eBook project with respect to my images of Venice. Having investigated the costs of printing a hard-copy fine art coffee table book,  I came to the conclusion that the benefit of eBook publishing far outweighed the expense of off-set printing a coffee table fine art book. Finding a publisher with distribution capabilities was daunting to say the least. With photography being a mainstream art form, publishers are inundated with proposals and my goal was to get something completed by the end of 2012.

Several weeks ago I learned of a 26 year old woman named Amanda Hocking. Apparently she had contacted EVERYONE in the book publishing business trying to get her young adult urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels published. No luck! So she gave self-publishing a try and voila ... success!

Amanda is already a millionaire author. She probably hasn’t written something you’ve seen at Barnes & Noble. She’s made her millions by self-publishing Kindle eBooks, which she claims have sold over 900,000 copies since April of last year; and with Amazon’s generous commission policies, she gets to keep 70% of the profit. Her selling strategy is that her eBooks cost anywhere from $0.99 to $2.99, prices low enough that many people probably wouldn’t hesitate making such an impulse purchase ... which obviously they have not! In fact, she is going to be featured in Elle Magazine's April issue.

While I am not looking to match Amanda's success, I am hoping to expose my work to more collectors and lovers of Venice. I not only plan on showing images, I also plan on writing about photographing in Venice ... from special locations to the technical aspect of my work.

I do not think the fine art coffee table book is going away any time soon, but I hope there are more photographers like myself willing to look at non traditional means of showing and distributing their art.

If you would like to be included in my eBook mailing list, click here to send me your email address. As soon as my eBook is completed, I will include you in my announcement. Stay tuned!