My thoughts on the publishing future

As of late, I have been getting numerous questions on where do I think the bulk of the publishing world is going. The answer in short is going digital. I know, I know there are a lot of people that are from the traditional paper mill that will fight tooth and nail about this sort of thing. But, the reality is just look at the statistics of what the current selling trend is. There is no doubt that that digital books are on the rise by an astronomical rate. It cracks me up to read some posts by traditional publishers who try to fight tooth and nail that there is no way that this will be possible as the dominant source in the near future. It is more than logical to note that to publish digitally there is almost no production costs, unless you hire a third party to design your book. Not only that, there is no risk involved except for a crappy review if your work is under par. The other beauty is that if you are an indie author/publisher you literally can set your own price. This prevents killing the wallets of your customers during a recession where they have already sacrificed so much money to pay for their e-reading devices. Keeping your costs down will help tremendously to satisfy your customers. This is why I don't mind charging only a dollar or two dollars to sell my book in digital form. This keeps my readers happy and it increases the readership. If you were able to look at the Amazon sales rank most of the top 100 books are priced at ZERO dollars!!! That's right ZERO. Heck, when I get tired of seeing my books sell for a time, I am more than sure that my books will be downloadable currency free. There is no limit to promoting a book and what better way than to do it free? I could see why there are so many Kindle customers out there that are just banning digital books that are over $10. If it has to cost that much, then it might as well be in the bookstore. This is not the conditioong of online consumerism. When these big time publishers get the picture and those already talented authors get the message that you don't need someone from New York to validate your talents it is no doubt that the future is digital and those that try to fight it will be left behind. By the way for an unknown indie author/publisher our initial novel just broke into the top 9,000 for kindle sellers! That is something to say for a company that started a publishing press from their laptop in a townhome living room.