Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Mommy Porn and eBooks


I have some vague notion of what E.L. James novel “Fifty Shades of Grey” is about although I did not know until today that this was actually a trilogy (you know, like “Lord of the Rings”). I was not surprised to learn that the books have sold 19.4 million copies in the U.S.  and 31 million worldwide. What does surprise me is that in the U.S., the sales are evenly divided between traditional books and e-books.

As the child of book store owners, this distressed me. As a lawyer trying to watch the trends, I find this fascinating. The book industry has apparently now caught up with the music industry in its transformation into the digital realm. We many not like it but its happening.

The Wall Street Journal offered some anecdotal evidence as to why the digital sales of the so- called “mommy porn” might be so high but the fact that nearly ten million people willingly downloaded an ephemeral copy of this classic cannot be ignored. This has got to make retailers nervous. However at the same time these facts offer significant encouragement to both book publishers and those exploring self-publishing.

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