We learned from Nielsen BookScan last year that romance was one of the burgeoning genres within the e-book market, gaining a market share in electronic format about seven times what its market share is of the print book market. And anyone who has followed Mills & Boon's transition to an e-book publisher, will know that lovers of cheap throw-away racy reads are true early adopters.

And why wouldn't they be? Here are books where readers are literally devouring every page before picking up the next. Somebody who knows this market well is Sarah Wendell, who spoke beautifully at Digital Book World and who contributes to the blog Smart Bitches Trashy Books dot com, about how publishers weren't doing enough for this kind of lascivious lover of e-books. She compared her love of the e-book to having a boyfriend, making the point that she didn't much care how her boyfriend was dressed (i.e. the device), she just wanted him (the books) when and where she could get him (unencumbered, that is by DRM). It was a great speech. The point was that these are readers who just want to read: they are not bothered by the architecture around books, and dare we say it not really that fussed by the literary merit.

So sashaying into this digital space is the grand dame of romance writing Barbara Cartland, or at least her estate, which is releasing 160 titles on e-book beginning with 10 on Valentine's Day. The estate is treading the same path as Ian Fleming Publications, except in this case the 160 titles in the "Pink Collection" were unpublished books. The published titles will be converted to e-books at a later date.

So there are some parallels, and I'd expect this kind of deal to become the norm rather than the exception in the future. Why should estates share their revenues with publishers if they can do as good a job getting them to market digitally as any traditional publisher would do?

But there's the problem. A poorly written press release sent unaddressed to The Bookseller's newest reporter, backed by a quite ludicrous web-page "news flash", which does not even appear on the site of its publisher partner "M-Y Books", does not strike me as the sort of marketing campaign the initiative merits.

In short, there's a reason why publishers do the jobs they do, and why they are mostly successful at it. We should not think that just because it is easy to do something digitally, it should be done with only facile attention to the basics. And as Wendell's speech made clear, these are readers that are worth nurturing for the long term.

Anyway, here is Jonathan Miller, managing director of M-Y eBooks, who told my colleague Lisa: "We are aiming to epublish all of her collected works over the coming years M-Y eBooks in partnership with Barbaracartland.com will make each title available through online stores such as Amazon and WH Smiths eBooks store as well as Sony, Books on Board and many others ensuring whatever e-reader is used the book is available to buy in the appropriate format."

And Cartland's son Ian McCorquodale, who told us: “E-books seem to be taking off now as a new medium. It was time for Barbara Cartland to go digital. I am hoping it will be a nice little earner."