By Kimberly A. Cook (Twitter@ WarriorTales)
It’s been a wild and wooly week for e-books and it’s barely Tuesday. The Digital Book Mobile was in Gresham yesterday and Portland, Oregon today, promoting getting e-books from the library.
http://youtu.be/JkKi_MNztlY
Then I stumbled upon this video about the challenge libraries are having with traditional publishers to get e-books into the libraries. http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=8619132&pid=8619131
Yesterday Microsoft pumped $300 million into Barnes & Noble for a 17.6% share of the Nook, making B&N’s shares rise 85%. Can’t wait for what happens today.
Next came this CNN Money article quoting Alan Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers citing a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Speaking at Columbia University he said,
“The United States has the ‘best educated 60-year-olds’ in the world’ but is in the middle of the pack when it comes to its 30-year-olds.”
What else does that mean for e-books? Ladies and gentlemen I give you the Baby Boomers. Our eyes are shot, we’re trying to downsize our stuff and save money for retirement. E-books were made for the “best educated 60-year-olds in the world” because we like to read and we can’t do mixed martial arts cage fighting anymore, our knees can’t take it.
My Mom has two boomer daughters and she is hunting Wi-Fi hot spots when she’s not using her home Wi-Fi with her Kindle Fire. Ease, portability and low-cost rule with e-books. There is a huge future e-book market with Baby Boomers, besides the digital natives growing up on integrated media. If you’re a Baby Boomer writer, e-books are our future.
For us Baby Boomer aspiring romance authors, the future of e-books is astronomical. Check out the latest stats from the Romance Writers of America about the romance industry http://www.rwa.org/cs/the_romance_genre/romance_literature_statistics Then realize romance readers are early adopters of technology and we have been snapping up e-books like free cupcakes. Check out buying and pricing habits here http://www.rwa.org/cs/readership_stats
In the meantime, we better get our hands on those 30-year-olds. They need to read and get college degrees. I’d like to retire from the day job before I turn 90!
Leave a Reply