E-BOOKSTHE NEW BUSINESS OF

WRITING FOR E-READING

By: Jack Hayward

The E-Book Industry

U.S. E-Book industry revenues were $7.59 Billion in 2016; growing at 50% annually since

they were $270 million in 2008

Source: Statista, PwC

The E-Book Revolution

E-book revenues are growing at the

expense of print…

Source: PwC

...however, E-book revenue growth has completely offset declines in the print segment

E-BOOKS NOW REPRESENT

¼ OF WORLDWIDE BOOK

SALES

Source: Statista

¾ E-BOOKS ARE PURCHASED

FROM AMAZON.COM

Source: Author Earnings

Kindle owners buy four times more books than they did before they owned the devices

“Media use begets media use”

– SEM

Source: FILM 240 Lecture

THE BENEFITS OF E-BOOKS

E-Books save paper, making them more

eco-friendly

Web-connected e-readers allow users to download new content instantly

One e-reader can hold hundreds of

books, making reading material

more portable

E-books can be interactive and

feature audio, video and web links

Source: SuccessConsciousness.com

THE COSTS OF E-BOOKS

Source: News-Medical.net

E-Readers are susceptible to being

hacked

Source: Panda Security

Studies show that young kids

recall less content from e-books

Source: FILM 240 Lecture

Source: NYBooks, ProQuest

Publishers Are

Watching You

What are you reading?

How long are you reading it for?

How far are you getting in the book?

1

2

3

Source: NYBooks, ProQuest

Kobo revealed that the British are

most likely to finish a romance novel (62%),followed by crime and thrillers (61%),

and fantasy (60%)

Source: NYBooks

Kobo will be sharing its data insights with publishers, hoping to help them write content that more effectively engages readers

Source: NYBooks

How Will This

Affect Writers?

Will authors be incentivized to write books that are read to

the end?

Will certain genres be preferred?

Will books be written shorter?

Source: NYBooks

Amazon is beginning to

pay authors per page read

Source: The Atlantic

This system will reward

cliffhangers and

mysteries – anything that

keeps the reader hooked

Source: The Atlantic

This begs the question:

Is this a system that

writers can game?

Source: The Atlantic

"The thing about a book is that it can be eccentric, it can be the length it needs to be, and that is something the reader shouldn't have anything to do with.

We're not going to shorten 'War and Peace' because someone didn't finish it."

Source: ProQuest

Source: The Atlantic

The rise of data available to publishers will drive content that is more targeted to attracting readers and maintaining their attention, but the question remains:

Will this come at the cost of literary creativity?

Works CitedAlter, Alexandra. "Your E-Book Is Reading You." Wall Street Journal 29 June

2012.Author Earnings. "Apple, B&N, Kobo, and Google: a look at the rest of the

ebook market." Author Earnings 28 February 2017.Cashin-Garbutt, April. "Does looking at a computer damage your eyes?" News-

Medical.net 28 June 2012.Hoffelder, Nate. "Now That They Exceed Print Sales, eBooks Sales Will

Continue to Grow Slowly." The Digital Reader 9 June 2016.Matrix, Sidneyeve. "Module 3 Lecture 1." FILM 240. Kingston, January 2017.Panda Security. "Did you know your eReader can be hacked?" 23 December

2016.Prose, Francine. "They're Watching You Read." The New York Review of Books 13

January 2015.PwC. "Turning the Page: The Future of eBooks." 2010.Sasson, Remez. "The Benefits and Advantages of eBooks." Success Consciousness

n.d.Statista. E-book sales as a percentage of total book sales worldwide in 2013 and

2018. 28 February 2017.—. "Revenue from e-book sales in the United States from 2008 to 2018 (in billion

U.S. dollars)." 28 February 2017. Statista. Wayner, Peter. "What If Authors Were Paid Every Time Someone Turned a

Page?" The Atlantic 20 June 2015.

Image Citations1) Canva2) Pixabay3) Pixabay4) Canva5) Wikimedia Commons6) Canva7) Canva8) Canva9) Canva10) Unsplash11) Flikr12) Pexels13) Unsplash14) Wikimedia Commons15) Wikimedia Commons16) Flickr17) Pixabay18) Wikimedia Commons19) Wikimedia Commons20) Pexels21) Wikimedia Commons22) Pexels23) Pexels

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