Steven St. Sure Enterprises

Baby Boomers Will be Buying 500 Million Books a Year in 5 years

admin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:55:42 +0000

In my last post I showed that writers were not making any money from me even though I am an avid reader. I believe that I am not alone in this. People that read a lot, unless they have a lot of money to spend, buy most of their books in used book stores and garage sales. Of course someone is buying them or there would be no books in those used book stores. My dad (when he was alive) and step mom, even though they had plenty of money came home from the library with arm loads of books. Westerns, and detective stories for my dad and romance for my mom.

I just did a little research about the baby boomers generation that is on the verge of retiring. Ten million will reach retirement age in the next six years. I am going to guess that 5 million of these will be like me, that is cheap or at least not much money in the budget for new books. Now a retired person can easily read two books a week. That would be around 100 books a year. Five million people reading 100 books each equals 500,000,000 (five hundred million) books. Now if each of these books sold for $3.00 in a used book store that would be 1.5 billion dollars in sales. A good profit for the used book sellers but nothing for the writers of all those books. If that money went to the top 5000 writers equally they would each make $300,000 a year.

This new generation of retirees are comfortable with the new technologies. If the top writers begin to publish ebooks in the $4.00 or less range the baby boomers will flock to buy electronic readers and these writers will be able to capture a good deal of this lost revenue.

Getting Published

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:57:31 +0000

It has always bothered me how hard it is for writers to be published and earn a decent living for their effort. I do realize that so many people want to get published and that this in itself poses a problem. And just like those trying out for American Idol, most might not have what it takes. But there are more readers than there are writers and so it should be the readers who decide what to read, not some over worked editor in a large publishing firm. I love to read and I am always looking for new authors to read. My problem is that I do not have a lot of money to spend on books and do not live close to a good library.

I look at the discount rack at Borders, read a chapter or two and I can tell if I want the book. For big time authors I have to wait until their books get into paper back and then into the used book stores or garage sales to afford them. The sad thing is how little the author gets paid for that book that sells for $15. That big time author is not going to get any of that small some of money from me. Now if he came out with an ebook for say $4 making $2.80 profit for the author (lets say 70%) I would buy it the day it came out.

Look at it this way. When I’m going strong I’m reading 3 or 4 books a week. Let say I bought new hard cover books that would be around $45 to $60 a week or up to $240 a month. My wife would kill me. So to stay alive I wait and the writer of that book I want to read doesn’t get his buck or two royalty for the sale. And when the paper back comes out I still can’t afford it so he doesn’t get any money from me then. Then I purchase it at a used book store for $3 and he doesn’t get any money from me then. He could have got the whole $3 when the book first came out if it was an inexpensive ebook but he got nothing from me. I am sure that there are millions of other readers like myself and if that is the case then the big time writers are losing million of dollars with the present system.

Something to think about. What do your think?

Print VS Ebooks

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:55:26 +0000

In my last post I directed you to Joe Konrath”s blog and an article where he describes the advantages of self publishing ebooks over traditional book publishing. He made another post that you might find interesting making a case for ebooks based on those that don’t think ebook are the books of the future. Take a look at his In Defense of Print

Is Self Publishing For You?

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:43:39 +0000

It seems everyone who has written a book or made a musical CD wants to get discovered by a book or record publisher and sign a contract. The chances of doing this is like getting on a major league baseball team. Even if this is possible it is not all gravy. You lose creative control. You no longer own your work of art. And your financial rewards will be low unless your book or cd sells millions of copies. Check out the following for one authors experience. Self Publishing

Overlooked Opportunities in a Slow Economy

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:13:06 +0000

With a slow economy and when people are losing jobs one thing is increasing and that is those out of work and looking for work have time on their hands.

Ok so we have more time what does that mean? Well we need to fill that time. When we want to fill our time we want to be entertained. During the depression motion pictures and radio entertainment boomed.

Also with more time on our hands we can let out our creative juices. So if we ever wanted to write a book or a song or create a musical cd or video now is the time. With the advent of the internet publishing our creative work got easier to publish and can be done for very little money.

So if you want to entertain or be entertained keep an eye on this blog for advise and direction.