Which Digital Books Are Thriving

A recent Publishers Weekly article focuses on how well ebook imprints are taking root in the publishing industry.

It highlights the changes and trends on the digital side of the business.

Kensington is one of the latest houses to launch an ebook-only imprint, eKensington.

Crimson Romance’s ebook imprint is unveiling an ebook subscription site for romance titles.


HarperCollins’ Impulse imprint will go from one digital title per week to two this fall.
Which ebooks are doing best? According to PW, it’s a mix. Books that have done best for the digital imprints encompass both original titles and reissues. At InterMix, Nora Roberts classics are among the bestsellers.
Over at Impulse, an original story by Rachel Gibson, “Crazy on You,” and an original novella by Eloisa James, “Winning the Wallflower,” have been winners. 
Loveswept’s top ebooks include an original title, “Because of You,”  from debut author Jessica Scott.

Kindle Lending Club

Now here’s an interesting idea – a sort of library for Kindle books.

A small company called Kindle Lending Club is connecting people who are willing to lend e-books to strangers who want to borrow them.

The five-person start-up was founded by a 40-year-old Canadian mother of three. She began with  a Facebook page which proved so popular, that she hired two web developers to expand her idea into a bonafide business. So far, the Kindle Lending Club is said to have facilitated the lending of more than 1,000 books among strangers.

Amazon announced its own Kindle lending program late last year but that seems to facilitate e-book lending only among friends, not on a potentially global scale like the Kindle Lending Club.

I would never want authors to lose out on their just profits. But an e-book library seems like a natural progression. We have libraries for tree-books, why not e-books? If anything, I buy more books from authors whose work I first discovered at the library.

It will be fascinating to see how this concept  progresses.

Kindle Books Outsell Paperbacks

Amazon reports it’s now selling more Kindle e-books than paperbacks. The online retailer says that milestone came sooner than its executives had expected.

According to Amazon, it sold 115 Kindle books for every 100 paperback books since the start of the year.

Does this signal the death of “real” books?

Nope. Because even though Kindle books are going gangbusters, it turns out that paperback and hardcover sales are still rising over at Amazon as well.

BY THE WAYthis is the LAST weekend to vote in Kensington Brava’s Writing with the Stars contest. I’m one of four remaining finalists in the online voting competition. I’d really appreciate it if you’d pop over and give it a look. I sure would appreciate your vote!