Is 2010 the tipping point for ebooks? If a look at recent movements in crime fiction are any indication, that appears likely.

Let me qualify “tipping point.” It’s not as if crime fiction fans will sweep all of their musty paperbacks and cherished first-edition hardbacks off of the shelves and replace them with a well-stocked Kindle. It does mean, however, that the e-reader of choice will become a viable option (and at times, the only option) for reading their favorite work.

I haven’t bought a Kindle, nor do I expect to any time soon. I love books — the tactile experience of reading — and see ebooks as a vastly inferior alternative. But, I’m also a Lawrence Block completist, so when I learned that he has assembled a Kindle-only collection of the introductions he has written for various books over the years, I sought out a way to read it. I found the solution in Amazon’s Kindle app, which allows me to download books and read them on my computer and smartphone. That’s not ideal, but it works in the limited instances where it is required. I also picked up the reprint (is there a better term for the electronic version of this?) of Block’s early novel, Campus Tramp. That will be out on paper eventually, but I wasn’t willing to wait.

Then came word in recent weeks that favorites Marcus Sakey and Allan Guthrie were issuing ebook-only books. For Sakey’s, it was the short story collection, Scar Tissue: Seven Stories of Love and Wounds. Guthrie’s is the novella, Bye Bye Baby. Each had their own reason for going the ebook route.

“Ebooks are a perfect choice for this kind of project,” Sakey told me. “Traditional publishers aren’t terribly interested in short story anthologies, which means that shorts tend to vanish pretty quickly.  Obviously I wouldn’t complain if Scar Tissue sold a million copies, but the real reason I put it out there was because I wanted the stories to have more life.  I’m fond of these seven, and it makes me happy to know people are able to read them.”

In Guthrie’s case, it was a matter of timing. “The print version is scheduled to be published in 2013 by Barrington Stoke,” he told me. “The audio rights have also sold. I just didn’t want to wait until 2013 to get the book out, hence the decision to make it available myself as an ebook.”

Both are well worth picking up (particularly at the bargain price of $2.99), and offer a nice appetizer before the next full-scale hardback novels for each. In Sakey’s case, Scar Tissue collects seven of the dozens of stories that the author is happy with. “It’s mostly a feeling that they’ve come alive,” he told me. “There’s a sort of squirmy vitality to a short that’s working.” Bye Bye Baby, meanwhile, shows for the first time what Guthrie can do with a police procedural, putting him on the other side of the law for just the second time in his career (the first being last year’s visceral rush, Slammer).

It has been strange reading these works on the computer screen (and even stranger doing so a few words at a time on the phone), but what I’ve come to realize is that it is the words themselves, not the format in which they are presented, that is most important. Would I rather have these in printed form? Of course. Am I willing to print out and schlep around PDFs to make that happen (which is an option with both)? Nope. So, I do what I must, because I want to read these stories.

For Block, ebooks offer a way for the author to bring back to life the dozens of books he cranked out early in his career, often under pen names, and keep in print his later books that seem to go in and out of print every few years. Campus Tramp was the first such reveal, with others sure to follow. “I’ve been hugely impressed with the medium for 15 years now,” Block writes of ebooks on his web site, “but could never tell whether it would ever amount to much. Well, it’s amounting to more every day, and it’s starting to look like the future of publishing. (If publishing has a future…)”

Oddly enough, the latest news about a Block book serves as a repudiation of sorts of ebooks. Dorchester Publishing, which prints and distributes Charles Ardai’s Hard Case Crime imprint, announced last week that it would stop publishing mass market paperbacks in favor of ebooks and the occasional trade paperback title. Ardai made it clear that HCC and Dorchester would part ways, because he (rightly) doesn’t see his books as ebooks.

So, the first news he has about the line was a surprise: Subterranean Press will bring out a hardback under the HCC imprint featuring 69 Barrow Street and Strange Embrace, two more early Block titles. Is that a last gasp for print or the sign of things to come? Stay tuned.

To download “The Days When You Were Anything Else,” one of the stories in Sakey’s Scar Tissue collection for free, visit www.smashwords.com/books/view/19303, add it to your cart, and enter coupon code YB98Q.

Another great new venue for crime fiction writers has debuted in the UK, and the results are well worth figuring out how to convert pounds to dollars so you can import them to your mailbox.

Crime Express, a new series from Five Leaves Publishing, offers a series of short crime stories each published as a short pocket book. They retail for 4.99 pounds (about $8), and are short enough to devour in one sitting. Consider them something between a short story and a novella, something perfect to keep with you for those times when you have half an hour to kill.

If you can hold off that long, that is. The first I’ve read, Allan Guthrie’s Killing Mum, is a ripping good read in the vein of his longer works. Hitman Carlos Morales gets an unusual job: killing his mother. But who ordered the hit? And how could he possibly pull the trigger? With 15,000 words to tell the tale, Guthrie doesn’t make the reader wait long to find out the answers, yet that amount of space allows for more development and description than your typical short story.

Other authors in the series include Ray Banks (Gun), John Harvey (Trouble in Mind) and Lawrence Block (Speaking of Lust).The Block book was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association short story Dagger this year. There are 10 Crime Express titles to date.

Five Leaves Director Ross Bradshaw answered a few questions about this exciting new series.

TIRBD: What was the genesis of the series and how does the work to date compare with that initial idea?

RB: For years I had the notion of publishing long short stories/short novellas, call them what you will. It stemmed from a couple of books I read, not crime, one being Swimmer in the Secret Sea by William Kotzwinkle, the other being Rain by Kirsty Gunn. I was impressed with what you could do with fiction that length. By chance I’m bringing out the Kotzwinkle in a new edition in the autumn, but that is by the by. Then I thought “series,” and then I felt that crime fiction would fit the series notion best of all. I know a fair amount of crime fiction writers and the first three I asked (John Harvey, Stephen Booth and Rod Duncan) were excited to try to write to the length I had in mind, 15,000/16,000 words, 20,000 max. It is quite a challenge writing to that length. And I thought they would work better as a stand alone imprint. Maybe get people following the series, collecting the set.

How are the authors chosen and what guidance are they given?

After those three David Belbin, a local writer best known for his young adult material but someone with a big interest in adult crime fiction, and the short story, came in as series editor. He’d already done the desk editing on the first three and years ago he’d edited an anthology of Nottingham crime short stories for us, City of Crime (boy did that title go down well with the then leader of our local Council). Dave’s been steadily building the list, and through everyday networking he gets the writers. I know he is concerned that the books work to their own length and are not a full length novel trying desperately to break out. That has implications for plot and character, and the number of characters of course.

I know the Lawrence Block story is a reprint from an anthology he edited. Do you foresee other opportunities to single out and highlight work that might otherwise have been overlooked?

Dave’s a big fan of Block and that story had been buried in a small press anthology series in the US that disappeared after two books, which was barely seen on this side of the pond. We were pleased to get such a big name on the list but after that the series has been, and will remain, all new work commissioned by us. Unfortunately we don’t have the time to read unsolicited material.

Is there an endpoint for the series, or will you keep things going as long as authors contribute and readers pick them up?

We’ve published eight so far. Some have sold very well, some less so. Unfortunately the major chains in the UK are not keen on the A6 size. When Murder One closed in London that meant that there is not a single crime shop in Britain (unlike the USA where there are many great independent mystery bookshops) which means we are very much in the hands of the big chain buyers. They are not keen on the format so we are looking at relaunching the series next spring. Same length, still Crime Express, but perhaps not the smaller format. Pity. A lot of readers did like that shape but the chains, the chains… We’ve commissioned a few ahead already.

How does it fit in with Five Leaves’ overall mission?

Five Leaves has done a few full length crime fiction books, but I thought the short ones would be better as a stand alone imprint. Al Guthrie and the previous book by Ray Banks are darker than the books we normally publish, but that is no bad thing. I don’t think we’ll go dark completely on the crime front but it seems to me that some of the most exciting crime fiction around is on the dark side. As to our overall mission… if I ever draw up a mission statement feel free to shoot me. Five Leaves publishes the books that excite us… social history, Jewish culture, young adult, a bit of poetry, a bit of this, a bit of that. And crime fiction.