E-book retail sales are expected to increase from $150 million in 2009 to $201 million next year, according to Professor Albert Greco of Fordham University Graduate School of Business. Professor Greco is an expert in the book publishing industry and measures expectations and trends. But even without benefit of study, one can easily see the inroads e-book reading devices, and therefore e-books, are making in the world of book publishing.

Television commercials for the Sony Reader abound. Kindles are the most popular selling item on all of Amazon. The recently released Nooks are flying out the warehouses faster than Barnes & Noble can make them. So then it is certain. The publishing industry is finally embracing e-books. But actually that's not quite the true picture. In reality, the resistance of traditional publishers to the technological advances of e-books remains. Just recently Simon & Schuster announced they will delay the publication in e-book form of their most highly anticipated books next year by four months. That is there will be a lag of four months from the time the book is launched in the hardback format until the e-book is made available. The reason they site is the lower price of e-books - typically $9.99.

It is understandable that large publishing houses such as Simon & Schuster would want to squeeze every penny they can from the sales of much more expensive hardback books when the market is hot for a new release. Organizations such as these are immense with enormous overheads to pay. There are all the top executives' salaries, the editorial team members, the production and publicity teams, the sales forces, rights and permissions teams, the expensive real estate for headquarters offices, to say nothing of the royalty advances paid to top selling authors. And of course this is the reason traditional publishing is on the ropes. It cannot embrace the new advances in technology. They all call for meaner, leaner, more efficient, more cost conscious business models. These are the days when dinosaurs are still roaming the earth, trying to hold back the inevitability of global change.

Self-publishing holds the advantage here. As authors are able to connect more readily with readers, through online publicity, radio interviews, bylined articles, blogs, social networking, third party reviews, etc., authors can quickly meet the changing demand in the marketplace and adapt to whatever technology seems to be winning out. For an author who undertakes publishing his or her book to decide to make it available in e-book form, as e-books continue to burgeon in popularity, makes sense, and it is easy to accomplish.

At Dorrance Publishing and our related imprints, RoseDog Publishing and Red Lead Press, we make all the books we publish available in all the most frequently used e-book formats. We want to be sure our authors are in position to take advantage of an area of the market that may well experience a 33 percent increase next year.