This (via PV) is a survey by the Pew Research Center on e-book reading. Wanna know why I don't think e-books are really flatlining and print is the future?

In the past year, the number of those who read e-books increased from 16% of all Americans ages 16 and older to 23%. At the same time, the number of those who read printed books in the previous 12 months fell from 72% of the population ages 16 and older to 67%.

So, you've got fast growth in the percentage of people reading e-books, and you've got a meaningful decline in the percentage of people reading paper books, despite the fact that paper books are readily available. Then you've got an awful lot of room for those trends to continue.

Yeah, I'm not going to mourn the end of e-books just yet.

The survey also shows that more people are using tablets to read e-books than dedicated e-readers, which again underscores the point that the e-reader market and the e-book market are two different markets.

In the spirit of making the same damned point over and over again: See how different the results are when you survey a different group? The Pew survey is of the general population, and the results look very different than when you survey publishers. Even small publishers.

Not to slam Dean Wesley Smith, who produced what I thought was a very good blog post about keeping production going. Lots of valuable insights there about striking a balance between accountability and perfectionism. He makes some suggestions, and then notes:

Chances are you will not remember [the suggestions].  Sadly. You will be buried in a life crisis and then when that clears you will be mad at yourself for not doing the impossible and protecting your writing time and meeting your weekly goals. And you will be swirling in the failure instead of just focusing on being successful the following week.

Wow, was that easy for me to type and so hard for any of us to do.

The real key to having a successful year writing fiction is that when you get stopped, and you will, to start back up as soon as you can.

All very true, and good for me to keep in mind as I recover from the holidays and look toward spring....