[DonaldL.]

Ebook sales are being driven by downmarket genre fiction

The ebook world is driven by so-called genre fiction, categories such as horror or romance. It's not future classics that push digital sales, but more downmarket fare. No cliche is left unturned, no adjective underplayed. At the time of writing, the bestselling Amazon Kindle book was Asylum Harbor, by Traci Hohenstein. Crime sells. Try a sample, I dare you. In digital, dross rises. But does this have implications for publishers' decision-making, as we increasingly migrate?

Price is a big driver of digital sales. Self-publishing authors have cannily priced themselves into the game. Publishers watched the demise of the music and newspaper industries. Should they keep prices high and differentiate their wares from the unedited efforts of the self-published? Should they cut prices for ebooks and risk accelerating the decline of print?