Due to what I’ll term a “catastrophic work day” I find myself at loose ends for a few minutes, and because I basically view my readership as a bunch of lab rats waiting for the cheese to drop, I’m conducting what we’ll loosely define as “market research.”

Twitch those whiskers, Undergrounders. It’s time to scamper along, leaving behind dark little pellets of hard market data.

Poll Topic: eBooks

It’s pretty much a given that eBooks will soon capture a sizable percentage of the publishing market. What isn’t clear is how that will happen (and in what markets).

Will author-published titles snap off a sizable chunk of the publishing market? Will publishing houses figure it out and preserve their place?

On the consumer end, friends who swore they’d never buy anything but paper now rave about their Kindles. Meanwhile, iPads and other tablets look like perfect reading devices, and I just read a science fiction novel on my Blackberry smartphone (my first on a phone). I won’t say it was the best reading experience I’ve ever enjoyed, but it was convenient and I read a book I might not have gotten to otherwise.

And that’s on a phone that’s 1/4 the size of an iPad.

Once ebook reading devices become more common, I think we might see an explosion in self-published ebooks, especially in marginal (niche) markets, where the publishers rarely market much and distribution clout doesn’t matter much.

But that’s me. What about you?

The Undergrounders Weigh In

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{democracy:14}

Comments, of course, are welcome.

Posted in Poll, Writing and tagged , , .