Welcome to the Dark Side

Examining how I buy books is helping me develop a marketing plan for my own WIP. I’m becoming a bookstore’s worst nightmare. Okay, a little over dramatic. I haven’t yet jumped to the dark side but I’m so close.

I grew up with print books and thought the whole eBook thing was so unfortunate- like the beginning of the end. It reminded me of the switch from VHS to DVD. I saw it coming and didn’t like it.

Funny thing…now, both books on my currently-reading shelf are eBooks.

Another change- I don’t browse like I used to. By the time I get to the bookstore, I know what I want and rarely do I deviate from my list. Goodreads and Amazon do all the work for me with their recommendations. I’ll spend hours going back and forth between those sites to build my to-read list but barely spend 30 minutes at the bookstore finding new things to read.

Why the switch? Content is what I care about not the wrapper. Ebooks are simply an alternative to print and they, sometimes, cost less. My funds are really limited so a $2.99 or $4.99 book is a beautiful thing. On top of that, I can have them with one click.

As for browsing, the fantasy and romance sections are massive and I don’t have the patience to casually walk through them, randomly picking up books. If the cover is not facing me, I pay no attention to it.

Even with the library, I search the online catalog beforehand, writing the locations of the books I want. From the comments for the article Browsing and Discoverability of Books in the Digital Age it looks like I’m not the only one who does their browsing online.

It’s easy to say technology made me lazy but if I loved browsing and print books as much as I thought, nothing should’ve change that. The thing is, I just like to read and don’t particularly care about the format of the book or how I find out about it. This is the reason why I want my book published as both print and eBook. Now that I’m thinking about my browsing habits, I have an idea of how to make my book discoverable.