A
few hours after posting the previous blog, in which I forecast a future for
dead-tree books for some time to come, I had to attend a meeting in Santa Cruz.
Before it started, I was talking with several people I know, and one of them
asked how my book was doing.
Another
asked what kind of book it was, and when I replied it was a mystery novel, he
said he was a big mystery fan and asked for the name of it. I told him The McHenry Inheritance, and in about 30
seconds he showed me the cover, from Amazon, on his iPhone. When I told him that
was the one, he bought it on the spot and showed everyone the title page on his
phone. Then another friend, also a mystery fan, joined the conversation, and
the guy who had just bought the book sent him a link as we stood there.
I
wish selling books could always be that easy.
Instant Digital Gratification
At
$2.99 for the e-book, my mystery, like a latte, is essentially an impulse
purchase. The internet makes it way too easy to buy something on the spur of
the moment, but since that’s working in my favor at the moment, I’m not
complaining.
Shortly
after Christmas I was reading The New
York Times Sunday book section on
my iPad when I came across a review of Death
Comes to Pemberley, a mystery novel by British author P.D. James, drawing
on characters from Pride and Prejudice.
My wife, Linda, is a big Jane Austen fan, so I e-mailed the review to her,
along with a query: Want to buy? From the next room, she e-mailed back yes, so
I went to Amazon, bought the book with one click, and a few minutes later had
it on my iPad ready to go. She stayed up late that night to get started reading
it.
For
all the ease of doing it that way, I am not yet a total convert. Probably three
out of four books that I read are actual printed books. I subscribe to the
Times on my iPad and enjoy it very much, but find it maddeningly slow at times
— three to four minutes to bring up a page in the worst case. I’ve been a New Yorker subscriber since 1968 and get
the iPad version as well as the print. I read about a third of it on the pad
and the rest in the mail-delivered print version.
Buyer’s Remorse
The
ability to buy something on the spur of the moment has its downside. A few
months ago I was in a large department store trying to cash out a couple of
bucks on a gift card. The only person ahead of me was a woman with two Santa
Claus-sized bags in tow, from which she was taking item after item, which then
had to be scanned for a return. As the line began to build behind her, she
turned, flashed a wry smile, and said:
“Sorry.
I do a lot of online shopping.”
When
I recently offered my book free on Amazon, more than 300 people bought it. If
15 of them actually read it and post a review, I’ll be doing pretty well. Most
of the rest probably grabbed it because it looked halfway interesting and the
price was right. It was an easy score, but probably with not much reward. It
calls to mind Carrie Fisher’s famous line, “The problem with instant
gratification is that it isn’t fast enough.”
