Rise of the eReader

If you are a self-published author of a novel, such as I am, you soon become acutely aware of certain facts:

• Kindle, along with the Kindle app, dominate sales
• It is almost comically easier to publish your work on Kindle than iBooks (or anywhere else)
• The numbers are shockingly in your favor. My first novel, The Empty Spaces (go buy it!) is available for $2.99 on Kindle. For that extremely low price, you are supporting a budding writer in a way that just a couple years ago was impossible. For $2.99, I receive about $2.00 per sale. For all but the most established, popular authors, $2.00 per sale on a paperback, say, was nearly impossible. Even if priced at $10 a copy.

All of which means that soon all of us will be published authors.

And the market continues to grow bigger and bigger...From the New York Times, on the cusp of (still another) content revolution:

For adults, tablet computers and e-readers were the gifts of choice, judging by a new report that indicates the number of adults in the United States who own tablets and e-readers nearly doubled from mid-December to early January.

The increased ownership of tablets was especially pronounced among highly educated people with household incomes of more than $75,000. Almost one-third of people with college degrees now own tablet computers, the report said.

Women were heavier buyers of e-readers than men, a finding consistent with surveys that indicate women tend to buy more books than men.