What the hell is an ebook?

I have ebooks on the brain pretty bad. I hardly thought about them six months ago, but now I can't stop thinking about them. (I just did a search of my blog to see if I've even mentioned them before and came up empty. Talk about being out of it.)

Anyway, are they good or bad? I don't know -- but something pretty amazing is happening and it could either be the best or worst time to be writing a novel. I am, however, seriously considering publishing Denny as an ebook, and not the least of the reasons is financial.

For a long time I wanted to write a novel to say I could. (To me, it always said something about somebody who could write a novel, though I've never been able to pinpoint what that something was.) That was part of the reason anyway -- when I started writing, I wasn't even thinking about getting an agent or getting approval bestowed upon me from some publishing house in New York. I saw friends struggle with these sorts of challenges, and I was still busy writing, so I filed them away in the back of my mind as necessary yuckies to deal with later. Who writes a fiction novel for money, anyway? I knew before starting out that my changes of being published were slim.

But nearing the end of my journey (sans rewrites), I looked out and saw colossal shift has taken place. Amateurs are selling hundreds of thousands of ebooks; professionals are selling millions. (Hatchette Book Group just announced today that James Patterson has tripled his ebook sales in less than a year.) While I haven't figured it all out, apparently the revenue cut for the author is a lot better on Amazon than with most publishers. And when you've got five kids and you're running yourself ragged with multiple jobs to make the bills, the thought of actually getting paid for your art is -- well, it'd make my wife feel a lot better about me going off to my writing group every week, for starters.

Again, I'm just starting to figure it all out. Which is a little frustrating, because I feel as though I'm way behind the curve on this one. But then, I've been busy writing. And no matter what happens, I can't stop doing that.