The e-book Revolution

All this hype about Apple's iPad and iBookstore may be becoming a tad tedious but there is reason for some of the excitement, especially for unpublished authors.

Some commentators are saying that the popularity of the iPad could bring about the return of low cost reading matter like the old dime novels / penny dreadfuls or even pulp magazines that were popular during the late 19th and early 20th century.

Of  course there are other (and some would say better) electronic book readers than the iPad (such as Amazon's Kindle) and most of these are more than capable of bringing about the revival of a inexpensive short stories revolution.

There are some caveats to Apple's iBookstore that complicate things for a small time author hoping to distribute their work. The first hurdle is Apple's requirement for all books to have an ISBN, which can be quite a costly exercise. The second hurdle is the requirement for a US Tax ID, maybe not such an issue to US citizens as it is to those in the rest of the world and hopefully over time Apple will open this up to tax ID's for each regional iTunes store, ie. Australia, New Zealand, UK, France, etc.

On top of that, your book must conform to the EPUB format and be encoded by Apple's dedicated software on a Mac with an Intel CPU running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or better.

Once over these, one must possess a valid iTunes account (so Apple can pay you) and one must be prepared to wait until enough of your books have sold to bring your balance over the earnings threshold set by Apple.

Does this all sound much too hard for a struggling author to cope with? Thankfully Apple have already anticipated your reaction and allowed for other self-publishing sites, such as Smashwords and Lulu, to do all the hard work to get your book on the iBookstore shelves. Most of these companies will also help authors (or anyone with something to publish) get their books into other e-book stores or even print hardcopies (I've mentioned Lulu in this regard before).

2010 is shaping up to be the year of the tablet (or slate) computer so expect to see more people reading e-books on these devices, as well as dedicated e-book readers, on a regular basis and hopefully authors will see a revolution similar to that being enjoyed by small time software developers creating apps for the iPhone (and other mobile device platforms). Stay tuned.