Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Yesterday was about ME today is also about me

Granted I didn’t do high profile promo for Taken Unaware, my new book at Samhain, but I’m more interested in reading other people’s books at the moment.

Yesterday I went to the bookstore for the first time in a long time and noticed how exotic it felt to wander the shelves. In less than a year, my book-buying habit (read: addiction) has shifted dramatically. These days I find almost all my books online. I usually go my local Barnes and Noble to pick up the paper copies of books that aren’t available online, but I’ve really cut back on using the bricks and mortar as a place to find my reads. Browsing in the bookstore is an extravagant experience reserved for special occasions. We avoid regular visits to keep the impulse buys down (mine and my kids’). Sort of sad.

That means almost all the new writers I’m finding are ebook authors. There are a lot of reasons for the shift besides trying to keep the spending down, reasons from lack of storage space to the great immediate gratification of instant buy and including failing-but-not-quite-failed eyesight. I can make the font bigger on e-books and that means I don’t have to track down one of the approximately 40 pairs of reading glasses I have stashed away, i.e. hidden from myself.

How do I find new books now? I’ve only found three Samhain authors, Bonnie Dee, Nancy Lindquist and Marie Treanor, through reading excerpts.

Ah, excerpts. So beautiful and so dangerous. There’s a reason I don’t often visit the samhain cafe loop. The excerpts are just as potent as a walk through the store when it comes to luring the innocent into impulse buys. Hey speaking of which, maybe you ought to go read this. Take your time.

The ebooks I buy are often from writers I met online. It’s interesting how many of the new writers in my autobuy list who are also online friends. I first bought their book because I liked their blog or their remarks in a loop.

My partial Samhain list: Charlene Teglia, Shannon Stacey, (and okay, maybe I started out with them because we’re going to be in a collection together coming in January) Linda Winfree, Lyn Cash, Nell Dixon, Dee Tenorio, Lauren Dane, Catherine Berlin, Denise Patrick, Meg Allison, Alexis Fleming, Dionne Galance, Bettie Sharpe, Kate Johnson, and others whose names I’ve forgotten—and who’ll either be relieved or offended that I didn’t mention them.

I wonder how people find their new reads these days. New York Times Book reviews, Romantic Times or some other paper review publication? Word of mouth? Online reviews? I imagine as the online world grows, the whole process of looking for and buying books has changed for a big chunk of the population. They might not even notice, like I didn’t, until they head back to the other, non-internet world. I only pray a trip to the bookstore will never be as quaint or outdated as flipping through a card catalog in a library.