An electrifying new twist in the plot as books turn over page for fresh chapter

THE death of the book has been prophesied for many years but rumours of its impending demise have, to borrow Mark Twain’s phrase, been greatly exaggerated.

Just as TV did not sound the death knell for cinema and video didn’t kill the radio star, so books have fought off the forces of modernity. At least that’s been the story up until now. But the seemingly inexorable rise of ebook titles and digital readers such as Amazon’s Kindle are threatening the traditional status quo.

According to the Publishers Association, consumer ebook sales rose by a staggering 600 per cent in the first half of this year alone, while sales of physical books fell by 1.1 per cent. Digital book sales have still got some way to go before they overtake their traditional counterparts, but the gap is rapidly closing.

Richard Mollet, chief executive of the Publishers Association, says there is no sign of ebook sales falling. “We expect to see an uplift in both print and ebook sales over the Christmas period, particularly for ebooks as people unwrap their e-readers on Christmas day. Publishers are making huge strides in creating experimental and innovative ebooks and ebook apps, which have even seen Bafta nominations this year.”

At the recent FutureBook conference, which brings together the movers and shakers of the publishing world, all the talk was about the industry’s future with Bloomsbury’s Evan Schnittman saying: “Print must survive for publishing to thrive.”

But while the publishing industry grapples with a changing world, what about the people without whom there would be no books – the authors themselves? Best-selling authors like Stieg Larsson, James Patterson and Stephen Fry have helped boost the UK digital book sales and it’s even helping authors who are no longer with us.

When Dame Barbara Cartland died 11 years ago, she left 160 unpublished manuscripts behind which her son Ian McCorquodale has made ready for publication. He began publishing her books in 2004, at the rate of one a month, but in February this year he started producing them as ebooks.

“There’s an ebook revolution going on especially for the kind of classic love stories that she wrote about,” he says. “My mother had a worldwide audience, but if you’re part of an ex-pat community then you might not have easy access to an English bookshop which is why ebooks are ideal. She has sold more than one billion books and we felt that by doing this she can reach an even greater audience and we can start a Barbara Cartland revival.”

It’s not only celebrity scribes who are benefiting from the ebook phenomenon. For self-published authors it’s also a way of reaching an audience who in the past were simply out of their reach. Scarborough-based author Suzanne Marshall self-published her first novel, The Mill Children, in 2009.

Set in Yorkshire during the 1830s against a backdrop of mill towns, stately homes and forbidden love, her book sold modestly. Then last April her son made it available on Kindle since when it’s gone from selling an average of one online copy a day, to 1,535 for the whole of October. In less than nine months she has sold more than 4,000 digital copies – propelling her to number three on Amazon’s historical romance bestsellers list. “I’ve been amazed how successful it’s been. I didn’t know anything about Kindle until my son kindly put it on there for me. It’s a great way of promoting your book and getting it out there to an audience it wouldn’t otherwise reach.” Part of the appeal for readers is price.

In Marshall’s case, her paperback costs £7.99, whereas a digital copy is just £2.99. Self-published authors like Marshall can also benefit from online sales because there are fewer costs and she receives 70 per cent of each online sale, far more than she would get in royalties if she had made a deal with a publisher. So although some people can be quite snooty about self-published books, many authors feel the digital market creates more of a level playing field because it’s the public, not the big publishing houses, that drives the bestsellers list. “We’ve got no idea why mine is selling so well but it’s been a real godsend and it’s given me the confidence to keep writing.”

Non-fiction titles are also proving popular. When Ben Hatch’s latest book – Are We Nearly There Yet? A Family’s 8,000 Misguided Miles Round Britain in a Vauxhall Astra – came out in August, his expectations weren’t high. It was his first book in 10 years and he had gone with a small publisher that didn’t have a huge marketing machine. It was published as a paperback and a few weeks later it was made available on Kindle, but within a couple of months it went from virtual anonymity to top of the bestsellers list. “It started quite slowly and then really took off about a month ago thanks to people on Twitter. It seems a lot of people who have Kindles are also on Twitter and after it got a couple of good reviews this buzz went round and it went from doing nothing to being the most downloaded Kindle non-fiction book in the UK last month. Suddenly it leapt above Booker Prize winners and people with massive marketing teams, it’s been amazing – I can’t quite believe it.”

His book is selling around 200 online copies a day and amassed an impressive 8,000 sales in November alone. “It’s all about how well your book is doing, there are only nine books on Kindle’s front page and mine happens to be one of them,” he says. “In the old days publishers would have had to pay a fortune for that kind of publicity so it seems a lot more democratic.”

However, not everyone is convinced that the growing popularity of ebooks is good news. Booker Prize winning author Graham Swift believes digital publishing could threaten the livelihood of authors in the future because they are being paid too little. Speaking to the BBC recently, he said: “Some potential writers will see that they can’t make a living, they will give up and the world will be poorer for the books they might have written.”

Hatch understands where he’s coming from. “I can see how it could be a massive boon if you are self-published because if a book starts to sell on Kindle, Amazon will market it for you. But most authors get hardly anything for an ebook because there are very small margins.”

Philip Jones, deputy editor of The Bookseller, says that although ebooks have provided fertile ground for people who self-publish their first book he questions how far that can go. “It’s very hard for self-published authors to sustain that. Those who have enjoyed continued success work incredibly hard to get it and they spend hours on social networking sites getting their book at the forefront of bloggers’ and tweeters’ minds.”

But he does believe the digital market will continue to grow. “It’s huge, it’s gone from around two per cent of the overall publishing market earlier this year to about 10 per cent. Last Christmas, only readers with a keen interest in technology bought Kindles but now there’s a much more generalised audience.”

This has brought into question the role of the publisher and their relationship with authors. “What has changed is publishers aren’t offering such big advances as they used to and instead authors are getting better royalty deals,” he says. So are books as we know them under threat? “There will always be people who want to own books, they certainly aren’t going out of fashion, they’re not dying, in many ways they’re flourishing because of the ebook market.”