Wow! What a year 2011 has been for digital publishing and the growth of the digital/ebook!
I am not going to start sprouting stats and figures and predicting 2012/2013 growth (Mark does that here), we all know what possibilities 2012 will bring and can pretty much put money on the continued upward trend of digital outpacing paper. No, what I want to talk about is a bit more fun than that.
As a writer, you often have little visions/images/scenes/films running in your head; you all know what I am talking about. We’ve all had that character sashaying their way into your imagination whilst in the middle of Tesco. My co-writer, Mark, takes it one step further and has full-blown night visits (but that’s a story for another day). Anyway, you get my drift.
If you’re a reader visiting this blog, then you may not know what I mean, but any fiction writer will tell you it’s true. Stories kinda write themselves, characters have a way of introducing themselves to you when you least expect it and taking your book off in a completely different direction, that is why we never plan our novels. It’s also why I LOVE writing. I have never had to sit down and think about a story, cool huh?
But, I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, Kindle Christmas.
Now, it is no secret that most of our 125,000 plus ebook sales in our first year have been through Amazon (and mostly UK), approximately 85% at a rough guess, although we have started to sell very well on Waterstones UK ebook site and currently have two books in the Top 20, but let’s face it, for us, this year, it’s all about the ‘zon. So we are very excited to see what happens over Christmas this year (it is really our first festive period of selling given that we only uploaded ‘Sugar & Spice’ at the end of November 2010 and didn’t do any promotion) when an anticipated 12 million Kindles will find their way to new homes.
Awww, isn’t she purdy? (of course it’s a girl, she can do more than one thing at once!) 😉
I have contributed to those sales, I currently have one in my cupboard for my mum for Christmas and when I racked my brains to remember where I had put it the other day, that is when I had my funny little vision.
All over the world, in drawers, attics, under beds, hidden in wardrobes, under trees and even in obscure places like behind the fridge, there are millions upon millions of baby Kindles just waiting to be set free! I can see them squealing and squirming in their little brown boxes, jigging about with excitement, counting down the days until some lucky wife, mother, father, brother, sister or the next door neighbours’ cats’ vet opens that package on Christmas morning!
It’ll be like a scene from Gremlins! As if they multiply when one person plugs them in, another one appears!
Tee hee. Made me laugh. It also frightens the hell out of me!
Will Amazon be prepared for the surge? Will their servers cope? What will happen to sales and the charts? Will there be a boom on other e-reader sites like Kobo etc?
Who knows… I guess we’ll have to wait and see, but one thing is for sure, the ‘zon elves are hard at work as we speak and I hope Ole St Nic had the foresight to tie Amazon into a ‘parts delivered’ deal, cos when most people open their pressies on the 25th, you can bet your life there’ll be a Kindle in there somewhere!
Happy ‘Kindle’ Christmas to all of our readers and fellow writers and publishers. I wonder what we’ll be saying this time next year! 😉
Saffi
Saffina Desforges 