Being a media-worthy author by providing bio, blurb, anecdotes for radio interviews etc has always been necessary. Now e-authors need to collect reviews, reader comments and visuals to go on Internet pages. Realistically, I anticipated that e-sales would be like the print subsidiary rights such as translations, nice to have, but just extras. Then there are rising royalty clauses if the book sells well and reprints. Once the epublisher has the content and can design the appearance, the book is available for sale.
Revisions are fast and possible.
Ecommerce is growing. With this data, the commercial, logical part of my author brain kicked in. A big market. But it also means a lot of junk will go on the Net, unfiltered by objective editors. Print publishers are conscious of their upfront financial investment and insist on quality editing whereas epublishers are often one-person, shoestring operations relying on fast response to orders.