Print books and ebooks

The first Geraldine Steel murder mystery, Cut Short, came out in print in the UK in 2009. A fellow author suggested my publisher bring it out as a digital book. It seems strange to recall that five years ago I wasn't really sure what that meant. Nevertheless I sent a polite request to my publisher to bring my debut out as an ebook. No one thought it was important, but six months later the digital version duly came out. 'Of course your books don't sell on kindle,' someone in the know told me. As for me, I still had only a vague notion what a kindle was.

Exactly the same happened with Road Closed in 2010.

But reading habits were changing. When Dead End came out in 2011, the digital and print books were published on the same day.

By the time Death Bed appeared in print in 2012, the digital book had already  been available for six months.

This pattern has been repeated in 2013 and 2014 with digital versions of Stop Dead, Fatal Act and Cold Sacrifice available for download six months in advance of  print books.

Nowadays, no one says my titles 'don't sell on kindle'. Not only have the print books reached bestseller lists in the UK bookstore chains and on amazon, but the ebooks have reached Number 1 on both kindle and iTunes.

What has been your experience of ebooks, as a reader or an author? Do you own a kindle or a tablet? And where do you see the future of print books, and with them physical bookstores and libraries?

Links to all my books can be found on my website http://leighrussell.co.uk