Writer's Report 2.0

This is big news for writers of all genres.

As I said last week, e-book sales may currently make up only 1% of total book sales, but the fact is e-book sales are growing while overall hard copy book sales are stagnant. This is only the beginning – signaling the tipping point…and Barnes & Noble is keenly aware of it.

Barnes & Noble, recognizing the growth in demand for e-books, has acquired Fictionwise, an online retailer of electronic books. B&N paid $15.7 million in cash for Fictionwise.

Steve and Scott Pendergrast, who founded Fictionwise nine years ago, will continue to operate its two retail sites, Fictionwise.com and eReader.com (which they acquired in January, 2008), as independent brands.

Although B&N has not sold e-books on their site in recent years, William J. Lynch, president of bn.com said, “The market hasn’t been that developed to date. We think it’s a big growth area going forward.”

E-book sales have more than tripled last year at a time when overall book sales were flat or falling. According to a survey by Codex Group, a book marketing research company, 3 percent of book sales from mid-December to mid-January were in digital form.

This acquisition sets up BN.com to compete directly with Amazon.com’s e-book sales and their Kindle 2 reader.

Titles bought on Fictionwise.com or eReader.com can be read on the Apple iPhone as well as on personal computers. Fictionwise currently has a catalog of about 60,000 titles.

Scott Pendergrast, CEO of Fictionwise, said the company believes Barnes & Noble will provide “more resources, more contacts with publishers more content and give us the power to compete in this market as it explodes across the U.S. and the world.”

Publishers are happy Barnes & Noble is a player in the e-book marketplace. They feel it dilutes Amazon’s ability to monopolize the e-book market.

Fictionwise recently signed a partnership deal with Plastic Logic, a company based in Mountain View, Calif., that plans to start selling an electronic reader (dubbed the “Kindle killer”) next year. However, Mr. Lynch said Barnes & Noble was, “not prepared to talk about” any plans to offer its own e-reader.

By LEAH DUMOUCHEL
Ann Arbor News

Cassandra Carter is one to make you think, “Hmm . . . what the heck was I doing with my teenage years?”

The 18-year-old’s own reply involves a nationally published book and two more in the works.

Her debut novel, “Fast Life,” was published in July as part of the “Tru” series from Kimani Press, a division of Harlequin that focuses on African-American young-adult fiction.

Carter started the book when she was just 14, after getting the idea from, of all places, a dream.

“I woke up and – I hate telling people this because it makes me sound crazy – but I heard a voice . . . saying, ‘Cassandra, you should write a book about that.’ So I created this character. It was about this girl and she’s . . . got to go and move real quick, and everything else just kind of came.”

There’s a lot of “everything else,” since the move is over in the first 50 pages. What follows is a fast- talking, high-rolling rumble following Kyra Jones between Chicago and an island in the Bahamas, complete with gorgeous guys, sniping girls, friendships gone horribly bad, scandalous wealth, the illegal drug industry and a few more page-turners.

Carter worked on it all through the summer she was 15, and when it was done she mentioned it to her grandmother, Sandee Grassi.

“I wasn’t at all surprised,” Grassi said. “Cassandra has always impressed me with her dream of and enthusiasm for writing.”

Grassi encouraged her to get it published, but Carter balked: “She was afraid it would change (the family’s) opinion about her or that people might think the book was about her life. But hey, it’s a book and it’s fiction – now, someone’s got to read it, right?”

Grassi talked her into at least taking it to an uncle in the book business, though Carter was still nervous.

“He’s a blunt person, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, what is he going to think?’ ” she said.

He thought it was a darn fine book. He passed it along to a friend who was a literary agent who ended up taking Carter on as a client.

She’s still taken a little aback by the book’s success. The online reviews at both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble’s Web site have been overwhelmingly positive, and the comments on her MySpace page are fairly bursting with praise.

“This is so surreal almost, sometimes, like going online to look myself up, and having people contact me telling me they like my art and my book,” she said.

She’s finished her second book, “16 Isn’t Always Sweet,” which is due for publication in March, and is working on a sequel to “Fast Life.”

“I’m excited to work on it. I’ve even thought about carrying (Kyra Jones) on through a series. . . . I’ve started planning things that happen to her in, like, volume 5. Trust me, I have a million ideas. I just need the time to sit there and get ‘em out, that’s all.”

And it’s time that she’s taking. Even though she graduated from Huron High a semester early with honors in January, she’s decided to put off college for a while and give this dream some hot pursuit.

“I know it’s such a risk putting school off the way I am, and it weighs on me. . . . They say that people who are successful at creative ventures like this are the ones who’ve been doing it since they were born, and that’s me right there, so I’m willing to take the risk.”