Posts Tagged ‘Amazon Kindle’

 

Social Media and the Book Publishing Industry

Sunday, August 26th, 2012

You like the feel of real paper.

You love the smell of a musty bookstore full of history.

You enjoy the pleasing look of a shelf full of books adorning your home.

Even with all the romance and aesthetics of the paper book, no one can deny that it is on it’s way out.

Bookshelf

Bookshelf (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Ebook Timeline

1. June 2012: A GalleyCat post on the history of ebook vs. physical book publishing noted that ebook sales surpassed hardcover book sales for the first time ever.

But that report only cited ebook sales surpassing hardcover sales. What about paperbacks? Read on…

2. August 2012: Forbes, quoting an Amazon announcement that “for every 100 print books it sold (paperbacks and hardbacks combined), it was selling 114 Kindle ebooks, and those figures are only going to go up. Amazon doesn’t say how the dollar value of its print sales compares to ebook sales, which is a slightly more important comparison, but with current trends we seem set to see ebook sales equalling paper sales within the foreseeable future.”

In the end, the publishing industry is all about the almighty dollar. Leveraging the use of social media to promote and market books has never been easier with the Kindle.

3. Hot off the Press: Google Chrome makes it even easier to share content on the web with your Kindle via this new extension. With the Kindle’s integration with Twitter to share content and quotes, authors and publishers are warming up to the new platform more than ever before.

You’re reading this on an electronic device right now, and there’re reasons for that…

+You recieved notice of this post on a social media outlet.

+Someone e-mailed you about the post.

+It showed up in you RSS feed.

Whatever the case, we read electronically now. Social media changed the game for the publishing world and continues to do so with new applications, platforms and devices. Yes, by all means enjoy your paper print books, but your e-ink version is just around the corner.