Chicken Scratchings

Okay, I admit it; I am a printed book snob. I want my books printed on nice paper preferably with gilt edges and leather embossed hardbound covers, but that’s just me. When I buy a software upgrade I always pay extra for a disk. I have files full of paper backups from things I store on my computer. I just don’t trust electronics, I guess.

My wife, who is more technologically inclined than I am, insisted I buy a computer for my Print Brokering business some 18 years ago. So I went to my local Office Max, and spoke with their computer expert who looked to be all of fifteen years old. He advised that I buy the latest PC with the brand-spanking-new Windows Operating System. That sounded good, so I bought it and carted it home confident that my wife, who worked on computers at her office, would be able to teach me everything I needed to know. Wrong. She was working with DOS and knew nothing about Windows. I was on my own. It was like being on Survivor without a camera crew, producers, or other participants; I was all alone.

I read tutorials, hired teachers, bought “easy to use software” before I learned that it was easy to use for the programmers who created it, but not for me. Despite my reticence I slowly I started to gain ground on this beast of convenience.

But it wasn’t long before I discovered the meanings of my C Drive crashed, my hard disks collapsed, and the computer froze. The admonition to save often made sense after losing a day’s worth of work. Then I found out about gremlins. Somewhere in the bowels of the malicious computer machine exists an intelligent life form whose only purpose is to make sure that the actions you perform today, will not work tomorrow, even if you meticulously repeat them.

This is the long road around to saying that I like many of us in the 50+ generation; have difficulty accepting anything made of electronic blips as friendly. As soon as you rely on them they erase themselves, become unintelligible, or transform into gigantic city stomping lizards. Well, maybe I went too far with the lizard thing, but you know what I mean. Heaven forbid you slip and drop them on the floor. Whether you are reading through a Kindle, an iPhone, or some other device drop it and like magic you’ll discover whether your credit card is maxed. On the other hand I can drop my printed book, pick it up and go on with my life. My credit card is untouched.

Is it inevitable?

So the question remains, is an e-Book a real book?  Somebody out there thinks so; e-Books are racking up the biggest sales numbers in the entire book market averaging an astounding 55.7% annual growth since 2003.  Compare this with all the other types of books from Adult Hardbound and Paperback, Juvenile Hardbound and Paperback, Book Clubs, Higher Education, etc. which grew a mere 1.04% annually (excluding sales for the Harry Potter series) in the same time period.

Here’s the shocker, do you know who are buying Kindle Readers by the boatload? The 50+ crowd. My peers. e-Book sales grew 183% among seniors aged 65+ and 174% among seniors aged 55-65. And here I was counting on older folks to save printed books.

Must I raise the white flag and surrender? 1.04% annual growth against 55.7% growth in e-Book sales is persuasive. Imagine fighting a war where the odds were 55 to 1. Can anyone say General Custer? My punishment for doubt is to write on the board 500 times, “e-Books are real books, e-Books are real books, e-Books are real books…”

How do you market an e-Book? Use the Internet. How do you learn how to use the Internet to sell e-Books? You can do it the hard way or the easy way. The easy way is The Author Platform. And you can test it for no money down. How’s that for an offer?

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