Ebooks and photos

Wendy asks about e-books. (Glad to know Bootleg is now an ebook—that has only happened recently!)
As a writer first, I want people to read my books. So any way they can do that is fine with me. I am worried, however, about what the e-reader revolution means for nonfiction as it’s published now. As several of you have noted, the photos, cartoons, charts and other images are part of the story, part of bringing the history alive. But those won’t show up well on the Kindle, for instance, and in the past, my books haven’t been designed with e-readers in mind.

To be honest, I don’t know where this is going—but I expect to have this conversation with editors on the next book I plan to propose. Personally, I think the iPad is a game changer and we can’t look at books the same way anymore. (Or newspapers. But that’s another, really complicated conversation!)

As for royalties, the price of an ebook is less, but I get a slightly higher percentage. I think I calculated that I make about 15 cents less on an ebook than on a hardcover. Of course, authors make a smaller percentage of a smaller price on paperbacks.

Laurie asked about photos for Let Me Play. I made a real effort to find photos that truly matched the text, so I didn’t want random images of female athletes. I spent hours upon hours tracking down the cover photo (which I had seen in a 1970s book). I called up the writer of Tank McNamara to get those comic strips. And I searched all kinds of archives for other photos. Altogether, I submitted about 85 images, thinking the publisher would use half that. But she and the designer liked the images so much, they used more than 70 of them. When I had to go back and get permissions for all of them, I regretted submitting so many!

With Bootleg, there were an overwhelming number of great images. It was truly hard to choose what to submit, and I’m afraid I probably drove the designer crazy with possibilities. But it was fun for me!
Best,
Karen