Get Writing 2011 and ebook fever

Last month I attended the one-day writing conference event organised by the Verulam Writer's Circle.

The main thing that struck me this year was the focus on ereaders.

Will they change the way people read?
Will they affect what is being published?
Will they change the way people write?

Here are the panels answers: ebooks will change everything. Short stories will sell better, as will episodically written books that are little more than strings of anecdotes. Paragraphs will get shorter. Writers have much more freedom of pursuing other routes to publication other than relying on the major publishing companies. Ebooks can be knocked up much more quickly than print (or p-books as they could end up being called), and the effects of this can already be seen, some established authors are publishing their novels in stages as they write - so we could end up with more books like the serialised novels of Dickens. Children's picture books are going down the pan at the moment but new formats with ebooks could help.

I'd like to add to this and say that especially in the case of the Kindle, reviews will become even more important. I always check the Amazon reviews of a book I'm thinking of buying if I have a computer handy, if I had a Kindle that would be the case for every new book I buy.

The consensus amongst the panel was that we've had a blip of ebook sales recently because of all the Christmas gadgets, (I got a Sony!) but we'll probably have a lull now. People may also end up reading more classics, as they fill up their ereader with Gutenberg freebies. This is so true, I'm reading War and Peace right now!

Ebooks account for 2% of book sales in the UK, and 10% in the US. I asked if publishers had any plans to really push ebook sales in the UK with a bit of advertising, surprise surprise they said 'nah, not really.' We know for a fact that ebook sales are on the rise - why not cash in on this? Publishers make more profit from ebooks, after all so you would think it makes sense.

I was shocked to hear that the definition of a heavy book buyer is someone who buys seven books a year. I'd say I buy around seventy books in a year, probably around twenty-five of them new.