Do they have any potential? Are the baby boomers and older not a market? Are there any good ones out there in addition to model railroad Ebooks?
No responses.... I guess that answers my question in this market. LOL
Reciently added to my Kindle "Railroad Days - Memories of the DL&W Utica Division" by Louis Langone. It was a conversion to Kindle from paper. But, some of the photos didn't come over, they are blank. Would think you books like "Set-up Running" would have a market, but maybe not so for picture books.
I do not have a Kindle, a pox on such devices. However, I have read that a Kindle is OK if you read from beginning to end without backtracking (pulp fiction or similar genres) but it is not user-friendly if you wish to flip back to a previous page. Consequently, it isn't too practical for non-fiction.
Wabash: My book Cotton Belt Engineer came out 8/12 in soft cover, hard cover and ebook format. The hard cover is outselling the soft cover 5/1. No one has purchased an Ebook yet. And all the inquiries lean toward hard cover format. The one thing I would say about the different formats is that the black and white photos will look better in ebook format rather than anything on paper.
Ed in Kentucky
Railroading is a very narrow niche market. I cannot even think of a book on railroading that made a significant impact in the general book market. And a lot of the books in the field that would be considered classics are in that gray area between out-of-print and public domain. It will be a while before some of the older material finds its way into electronic format. I expect that new titles will be made available more quickly, as the market allows.
Dan
Dan: You have identified a reason to electronically publish a book. With an ebook your book never completely dissappears, it is always available. And an ebook is ultimately searchable if linked sources remain the same. The publishing world is changing wether we want it to or not.
SSW9389 Dan: You have identified a reason to electronically publish a book. With an ebook your book never completely dissappears, it is always available. And an ebook is ultimately searchable if linked sources remain the same. The publishing world is changing wether we want it to or not. Ed in Kentucky
I think what I'm getting at is that while being able to get the complete railroad works of Lucius Beebe, S. Kip Farrington, or Don Ball, Jr. in ebook format may be a desirable thing, there may not be enough demand to justify the costs of porting these documents to ebook format. Moreover, some of these documents may still be under some kind of copyright protection, meaning that unless the copyright holder is interested in getting these books out in ebook format, it can't happen until the documents fall into public domain. (The fact that many image-rich books include pictures licensed from others complicates this.)
The publishing world is changing. But I think that it is more likely that the recently released Love's Burning Savage Passion, will be released in ebook format than will a reprint Freeman Hubbard's Railroad Avenue. The stuff that will sell a lot and fast, will be available in the latest and greatest format as quickly as it can be made available. The stuff appealing to a narrow niche (like railroading), will take a bit longer.
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