The Australian Society of Authors (ASA) is looking to push electronic publishing as the default over traditional paper printing as they believe it would prove to be a much more profitable method.

A study was recently conducted by the ASA as to what changes electronic publishing could have on author contracts and recommendations were given that authors push for royalties of 35% from ebooks. The study compares this with royalties of up to 10% of the retail price of printed books.

Due to less overheads from ebooks versus printing costs, physical storage and shipping this would also mean bigger profit margins for authors happy to publish their works on online retailer sites.

But how about the popularity of ebooks? Well - Amazon recently reported that it has sold 180 ebooks for every 100 hard cover books over the last three months. That figure excluded free ebooks, too.