This is a great article for authors / childrens book illustrators who want to get their books out there digitally. To sum up, authors are making their e-books available through app stores at affordable prices… and making it big.

E-books are the next generation of self-publishing… or e-publishing. It’s inexpensive to create an e-book, and as easy as creating a PDF… do a quick google search and there are many articles on how to build your own e-book. I also love the fact that the impact on the environment is low… you aren’t wasting paper by printing thousands of books, are saving the cost of fuel in distributing the books, etc. Because authors are saving on the up front costs of printing their books, as well as publishing themselves and cutting out the middle-men (printers, publishers & shipping), they are able to price their books lower and reach a wider audience.

“While traditional novelists only see a very small amount of royalties on their book if it’s not a best seller, Hocking gets 70% of all money from her book sales. Since she sells around 100,000 copies of her books per month, that’s a lot of money.”

I bought my first e-book this week (Ready, Set, Green : Treehugger.com), and I must say I was miffed that it was priced the same as the printed paper version… if I have the choice between a paper book and a digital book at the same price, I would pick the paper book hands down. It just doesn’t make sense why publishers would price these e-books at the same price as printed books if they are saving so much money on printing & distribution. (Who wants to spend a lot of money on something that can be duplicated with as little effort as typing Apple-C-Apple-V?)
There are ebooks also available as iPad apps for kids… iBook comes with a free copy of Milne’s classic Winnie the Pooh, and in the app store there are many free picture books for kids (The Grouchies by Debbie Wagenbach.) Children’s book authors/illustrators have a great opportunity to add e-books alongside their printed book offerings.

P.S. If anyone comes across a great how-to for building a picture e-book, please let me know! I’m going to give it a go myself at some point on my own picture books, but being on maternity leave it’s not exactly a high priority over changing diapers at the moment ;)

“Kindle indie author is making millions by selling the App Store way” via Geek.com