I’m not a fan of Stieg Larsson books, but many people are.

This article, ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ Sells More Than 1 Million Digital Copies – NYTimes.com, reports:

“In what is believed to be a first for an e-book, ‘The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,’ by the Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson, has sold more than a million copies in its digital format, Knopf said on Thursday. “

The article also reports that: “The “Millennium” trilogy has sold nearly 17 million copies in the United States.”

Publishers are always complaining that digital editions will cannibalize their print sales, and this could well be evidence that they’re wrong.

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Love it or ignore it, the launch of the iPad is opening up a new era of publishing.

When Theodore Gray, author of “The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe,” heard about the iPad, he started work on an iPad version of his book, which was published in 2009. He also launched a new interactive publishing house, Touch Press.

In the article, “Future of publishing: Reinventing the concept of the book”, he says about Touch Press:

There are many companies that offer the service of taking thousands of back-list titles and putting them on a Kindle. But we’re really reconceptualizing books — new photography, new software development. Reimagining books in a super-interactive form. We look for books that would work well with interactives. For instance, a book about the solar system — you need to be able to look at the planets and turn them around.

Read the article, it’s fascinating.

In April, Touch Press is bringing out T.S. Elliot’s poem, “The Wasteland”, as an app.

Can your ebook function as an app?

In the light of what Touch Press is doing (no doubt other publishers will follow), it’s worth thinking about how you could use this kind of technology in writing your books.

Could one of your ebooks work as an app?

Are you thinking of buying an ebook reader? Amazon’s Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6
has been out for a while, and is hugely popular.

However, there are many other options, with new ereaders appearing regularly. Barnes & Noble have the Nook, and of course, Apple has the iPad.

I’m looking forward to receiving my Apple iPad Tablet (64GB, Wifi), which is arriving in around a week.

While I’m looking forward to reading ebooks on it (including the ones I’ve purchased for my Kindle, I’m much more interested in using it for writing.

Have you bought a portable ebook reader? Which one did you buy, and why did you choose it? Please tell us in the Comments.

Traditionally, self-publishing has been seen as an act of desperation.

If you couldn’t get your book published by major publishers, you took the self-publishing route. Unfortunately the upshot of this was sometimes a garage piled high with boxes of books you couldn’t sell.

The Web has changed all that.

When speaking with established writers, I’m hearing that nine times out of ten they prefer to publish online, first.

Here are some comments:

I can publish my ebook with a few clicks of my mouse in days, rather than years. Since I’ve got a mortgage, it makes sense…

Eight or 15 per cent looks silly next to the 100 per cent profit I make from self-publishing…

I love it – when I publish online, I have direct contact with readers…

Should you self-publish?

That depends on YOUR business plan. You do have one, don’t you?

You must know what your goals are for your writing.

Self-publishing is a great way of testing the waters of a topic. You can create a blog, and self-publish your book in a very short time. You can still go the traditional publishing route, but one of the big benefits of self-publishing and selling your own ebooks is that publishers will often approach you.

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