Selling e-books for 'price of cup of tea' devaluing literature, says novelist

London, Aug 4 (ANI): A popular crime novelist has slammed the growing self-publishing industry, saying selling e-books for "less than half the price of a cup of tea" is devaluing literature.

The remarks from Mark Billingham, author of the Tom Thorne detective series, came while responding to fellow author Stephen Leather, who said e-books provided a better deal for readers and writers.

Leather described the industry as "shifting units" to "punters" at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate.

Billingham, however, said that books were devalued if they were sold for "less than half the price of a cup of tea," The Telegraph reports.

According to the paper, in 2011 there was a 60 percent rise in the number of self-published titles as electronic readers such as Amazon's Kindle grew in popularity.

Some 211,000 works were self-published in either print or digital form while Penguin books owner Pearson bought out self-publishing firm Author Solutions for 116 million dollars. (ANI)