eBooks: a boon to readers and self publishers


25th of October, 2011 Bookmark and Share

The speed at which the sales of Kindle and other digital ebooks have taken off has been quite spectacular. Amazon online sales of digital books are now greater than sales of all other printed book forms. My own Kindle Books are already outselling the paperbacks by more than 4 to 1. With the recent launch of Google eBooks this trend may well accelerate.

Now the ease of self-publishing in digital form makes it possible for anyone to publish and make their work available to the wider public as never before – and let the public decide. The old monopoly of agents and publishers controlling what and who gets published is broken. And they are none too happy about it. They fear that there will be too many inferior books reaching the market now that ePublishing is so easy and economical. The simple fact, and history proves it, is that this elite is no better at judging the quality and potential success of books than the reading public.
And as there are no printing or postal costs and with Amazon’s 70% royalty option authors and small publishers can actually make profits instead of losses. Payment is easy and quick – straight into bank your bank account each month.

The geographic reach for digital books in English is increasing rapidly as well. Amazon Kindle Books have been available in the U.S.A, U.K. and Canada for some time and are now also available in Germany, France, Italy, Austria and many others.
Recently launched Google eBooks will provide choice for readers and worldwide availability of English eBooks. Google has the world's largest ebooks collection, which are suitable for Android, for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, for the Web and for eReader. They are already available in UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Italy, and more soon.
The books of Linda Carlino's Spanish Hapsburg Trilogy - That Other Juana (Juana la Loca), A Matter of Pride (Charles V), Wives & Other Women (Philip II of Spain) are now available at Google eBookstore www.Books.Google.co.uk/ebooks as well as Amazon. The books of the trilogy are connected (mother, son, grandson) but each book can be read separately.

That Other Juana (Juana la Loca), was published in Portugal in 2009 and the other two books of the trilogy will be published there during 2012.
It will also be published in Brazil in 2012.



Linda Carlino
Linda was born in a mining village at the southern edge of the Durham coalfield in the Northeast of England. She had a lifelong passion for history and historical fiction and a five week independent tour of Spain in 1988 ignited her interest in its history. She was hooked. She wanted to know more, much more. She studied Spanish and then started reading Spanish sources in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid and the British Library in London. Books: In August 2007 VeritasPublishing published her debut historical novel That Other Juana (Queen Juana I of Spain) and in October 2009 it was published in Portugal by Editorial Presença. A Matter of Pride (Charles V, HRE) and Wives & Other Women (Philip II of Spain) were published 2008. That Other Juana will be published in Brazil during 2012 In 2008 she was elected a Full Member of The Society of Authors.