The Indie eBook Revolution or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love My Kindle

For my last birthday, I received a Kindle. I was pleased, yet I had trepidations about it (I blogged about said worries. Click here if you want to read that piece).

Well, I've now had the Kindle for almost a year. While I haven't given up my love of the printed word (c'mon. I'm a library student. There's no way I'm going to ditch books), I do definitely see the value in it. Especially when coupled with Twitter.

"What?" you're saying. "Seriously, how does the Kindle connect with Twitter?" I'm happy to tell you. I'm on Twitter (follow me!) and I love to follow other writers. It's fun to find people using hash tags (my favorites are the #FridayReads and #AmWriting ones). It's also very fun to find new reading material.

More and more authors are going the "indie" route and deciding to self publish their work. The issue, of course, is how to market that work? Twitter is the perfect way. And eReaders are the perfect medium.

Many people have credited the eReader with the rebirth of the short story and I think there's a lot of truth in that. It's difficult to find an audience for the short story. Even if people like them, they don't know where to look. Anthologies are great, but they can be big and pricey and may only contain one or two stories that you care about reading. Not so with the Kindle. You can pick and choose your stories. And they're usually priced under $5. I can $5 like ANYTHING. I've discovered a lot of great new authors this way.

I'll never stop loving books. But the Kindle will definitely have a permanent place in my home.