IPad madness is here. Developers are creating applications for the platform, even though most haven’t even handled one of the devices. And Ars Technica believes that Apple sold 20,000 to 25,000 of the devices PER HOUR in pre-orders.

Apple will sell millions of iPads in the next couple of years.

Booksellers are getting ready.

The iPad App Derby Gets Under Way – NYTimes.com reports:

“Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble are working on apps for buying and reading electronic books, even though both companies sell their own e-reading devices and Apple will offer its own iBooks app. The expectation is that the iPad will give a big lift to the e-book market, benefiting the whole industry. “

What will the iPad mean to authors?

What does this frantic activity mean to you as an author?

Primarily, it means that ebooks will be big, and that includes self-published ebooks.

You can convert your word processor manuscript into ePub format (software to do this is available), and you can start selling your ebooks to be read on the iPad. You’ll have millions of potential readers, and endless ways to get your books in front of them.

It’s an exciting time. If you haven’t been tapping your fingers to the bone, get moving!

Here’s an interesting experiment at the Boulder Book Store in Colorado. Print on Demand (POD — self-publshed) authors sell their books on consignment on the bookstore shelves, and pay for the privilege.

The Boulder way: A bookstore’s experiment with microdistribution » Nieman Journalism Lab reports:

“…The store charges its consignment authors according to a tiered fee structure: $25 simply to stock a book (five copies at a time, replenished as needed by the author for no additional fee); $75 to feature a book for at least two weeks in the ‘Recommended’ section; and $125 to, in addition to everything else, mention the book in the store’s email newsletter, feature it on the Local Favorites page of the store’s website for at least 60 days, and enable people to buy it online for the time it’s stocked in the store.

And for $255 — essentially, the platinum package — the store will throw in an in-store reading and book-signing event.”

If you’re a new author, and haven’t set up your own marketing, it sounds like a great offering to me. You’re getting your book out there, and that’s important.

Few bookstores will stock POD books, so let’s hope that more of them develop this distribution model for their local authors.

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Writing a book? if you’ve been reading this blog, you know I’m a great believer in getting your name and work out there, whether it’s via a blog, or by self-publishing.

Who knows, you may just get a book deal.

Yes, it can happen. Jossey-Bass, the west coast imprint of John Wiley and Sons, for example, has just signed up a couple of self-published books.

How self publishing can lead to a real book deal reports:

“We changed the title from the original Becoming Whole to one more descriptive: The Power of Memoir – Writing Your Healing Story. We also did a lot of developmental editing on the book, focusing it more on a program of how-to-write a memoir, and adding excellent case examples that were each highly readable stories in their own right.”

Publishers want to make money.

When you self-publish a book, it tells them that you’re serious; you’ve got a book out there. More to the point, the book is DONE. It’s written. They can read it, and as in the case above, they can help you to make it better — more salable, that is.

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The self-publishing company Author Solutions will be distributing writers’s books with Scribd.

This sounds like an excellent development, which will make Author Solutions’ books widely available, and this is always a good thing.

Scribd Inks Distribution Deal With Indie Book Publisher Author Solutions reports:

“In a statement, Author Solutions says the Scribd portal currently attracts over 50 million users per month, and that the startup’s platform will help authors make more money from book sales because it brings higher royalty percentages than are possible with traditional paper-and-ink books. In its promotion video, which I embedded below, Author Solutions says it has helped some 85,000 authors get their books published to date.”

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Stephen King published a novel online a few years back. Now Alexander McCall Smith of the “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” fame is publishing a novel online.

Corduroy Mansions by Alexander McCall Smith – Telegraph reports:

“Alexander McCall Smith is writing his first ever online novel Corduroy Mansions exclusively for Telegraph.co.uk. A new chapter will appear on this page each weekday for the next 20 weeks. The best-selling author welcomes your suggestions as the story unfolds.”

What can you learn from this? The main thing you can learn is that if publishing your novel online is good enough for the likes of Stephen King and Alexander McCall Smith, it should be good enough for you.

The advantages:

1. You get readers

2. If you get enough readers, you get a publisher

3. You get instant reaction (or not, as the case may be)

4. You show agents and editors that you’re a serious writer, who’s au fait with publishing and how it works

The disadvantages?

I can’t think of any.

If I were writing a novel today, I’d publish it online, no question. I’ve got used to the instant gratification of the online world. I don’t have two years to waste shopping a novel around the publishing traps.

If you’re writing a novel, publish it online. The worst that can happen is that the book bombs. You may as well know it now, rather than two years from now.

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