Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Segregation?

It was a toss up as to what I was going to blog about today. There’s the ever popular promotion blog … or there was the discussion of the pros and cons of the ebook signing at the RT conference this year. You may have heard about it. This year in Pittsburgh, RT decided to hold a book signing for the e-pubbed authors on Wednesday and the usual signing for the print authors on Saturday.

I recall there was a lot of talk last year when this idea was first broached. A lot of fear that the e-pubbed authors were going to be segregated from those who were in print. I’ll admit, I had a few doubts myself and participated in a lot of discussion with other writers — both published in eformat and in print. No one was quite sure what to think of the idea.

However, this year I had the advantage of being able to participate in both events. I had books released in print and in eformat. I was able to form an opinion as to the success of this idea and personally speaking, I thought both events were huge successes. By having the epubbed authors do their signing on Wednesday (3 days prior to the usual Saturday event), we were able to draw our target audience. These are the people who are advocates of ebooks … who go in search of them. There was no competition for space and plenty of buyers interested in our product. The turnout was terrific and the people were eager to meet and chat with favorite authors.

Despite all the misgivings, the main thing we have to keep in mind when participating in book signings at RT (and at the RWA National conference). The proceeds are for the benefit of literacy. This isn’t a matter of us versus them. It’s a matter of selling books (whether in print or in eformat) for a good cause.