In a new article on Straight.com, Vancouver Free Press took a look at the recent BISG report that identified where ebook adoption rates are growing the fastest—particularly among readers of genre fiction like romance and sci-fi. The article notes that fiction outperforms all other categories, and the most voracious readers, who can go through several genre books a week, see the benefits of ebooks more quickly than others.

But on the publishing side of things, it’s the willingness of genre publishers to meet their customers’ needs that makes this possible:

Peter Darbyshire worked for six years as a proofreader for Harlequin Enterprises, until he left Toronto for Vancouver in 2003. Since then, he’s focused on fiction writing and journalism, and has authored two novels.

Darbyshire noted that the romance industry has done for years what the electronic market has only now pushed other authors and publishers to start addressing. Romance wisely cuts out industry gatekeepers and focuses heavily on readers.

“The romance industry has always done a very good job of reaching out to the readers [as] opposed to the bookstores, which is what [traditional] publishers normally do,” he said, on the phone from his home in Langley.

Read the full article at Straight.com

(Photo: mikemol)

1 COMMENT

  1. I’m a “genre” ebook reader, and the publishers I buy from are not the Big 6. My favorite publishers have clued in to what parts me from my money – low prices, wide variety and lendability. I want the ebook to be cheap enough that I feel justified in buying it even though I will likely only read it once. I want new authors to appear on a frequent basis. And I want to be able to share my ebooks at least once with a friend. The Big 6 will not give me all three, but smarter publishers have and I am spending like never before.

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