GigaOm has, I feel, a very simplistic sense of the ebook space. However, at times, that can be a very useful thing, because it sweeps away many of the assumptions that industry folks can make almost unconsciously. In this article, I think they do that pretty well.

The advent of tablets and e-bookstores dramatically lowers the barrier to entry for these kinds of writers, who would previously have had to find an agent and a publisher willing to take them on or self-publish via the web or a blog, and would have had to pay them a handsome share of any revenue as well. Now, through services like Bookbrewer and Kindle Singles, they can reach what is potentially a much larger audience, and maybe even make some money. Amazon and other e-book publishers pay authors as much as 70 percent of the revenue their books make. The e-book market as a whole continues to grow rapidly; the latest figures from the Association of American Publishers show that sales climbed 172 percent in August.

via The Evolution of the E-book: When is a Book Not a Book?: Tech News «.