Book Publishers and Literary Agents are Leaning Toward a Greener Market

I'm excited to see that publishing houses, even literary agents, are going green. I mean, we are talking about a big industry that relies heavily on press with copy by copy of books being printed by the millions! They've tried recycling older materials for their latest releases, but with the transition into a more digital and enviromentally consious year of 2010, they are going digital.

Majority of literaty agents are abandoning the long process of snail mail queries and submissions, and are asking for EMAIL ONLY queries which recieve faster responses than that of snail mail. Some of the more polite agents send form rejections via email when they aren't interested in an author's material, instead of the "silent treatment" which leaves a writer wondering, "what happened with my query?"

In these tough economic times, publishers are trying to save a buck. Well, who isn't? Therefore, they are publishing newer titles via e-book, instead of having to pay those outrageous cover charges to have books put in print. Although, the bigger publishers like S&S, Penguin, and Harlequin are still putting works in print, they also have the same bestselling titles available electronically.

Yet, shadowed by these larger giants are the small publishing houses. How are they doing? E-books? Duh! I've recently heard of a new e-publisher called Carina Press who've just opened their inboxes for electronic submissions. They are only offering works in electronic form, do not expect to find these titles in your local bookstore, but this is good news for authors. Normally, the cover charges are taking from the earning that the book sells, leaving only a little bit of wiggle room for royalties. With e-books, those fees become nonexistent, and that means a larger percentage of royalties go to the author.

Readers are also leaning more toward electronic reads instead of print. E-books are more convenient to access and order, and with newer devices such as the Amazon Kindle, eye sore is lessened due to a more eye friendly screen, almost resembling print.

I'm very excited about the upcoming digital age for the publishing indusrty.