One just followed me into the elevator and started throwing questions at me faster than I could answer.

"But where do I go to reach my readers online?" she asked.

"And how do I find sites for angry teens on the Web?" she continued.

"And what format do I publish in?" she added.

When I told her I really needed to get back to my room to make a phone call she became enraged. Positioning her stout body against the elevator door to keep it open, she shouted at me: "But I have a good book, too. You aren't the only one who deserves to get published! I paid $35 to hear you talk and now you won't tell me what to do!"

A few hours before the elevator incident, I'd done a bookstore reading with a very well-known Oprah author. It was a delight to be included in such august company. Until, of course, the host of the event introduced me to the Oprah author by saying that I'd written a much-talked-about e-book that had crossed over to print.

At the word "e-book" the author's eyes glazed over. To this fellow writer I'd ceased to exist. Not another word was exchanged between us -- I'd become invisible.

"But look," I wanted to shout, waving my book, "I'm in print too. I'm just as real as you are -- just not as rich."

I'm used to it by now. My own scarlet letter is the "e" before the word "book." It's the damning term that turns so many heads and stomachs at the same time.

Electronic publishing is the wave of the future. No, e-books won't replace print books completely, but like paperbacks and audiobooks they are a form that is here to stay. They will give thousands of authors opportunities to get their words read. They will solve certain distribution issues for publishers. And they will make money one day.

Millions of people already get their reading material electronically, so why not get books electronically?

In the past six months alone, more than 5 million e-books have been downloaded off the Web. And read.

But when you're the reluctant "queen of e-book publishing" (as Publishers Weekly has dubbed me), everything isn't rosy. You do get lots of questions about e-publishing, but the thing you don't get is the one thing you want most: respect as a traditional writer.

My foray into the electronic world began in 1998, when I self-published my first novel, "Lip Service," as an e-book and sold it from my own Web site.

Oh, I'd had an agent, and she had gotten rave responses to my manuscript from New York publishing houses. But ultimately my book was rejected because New York didn't know how to market my cross-genre erotic/light lit/page turner.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"