23 months of sales stats for ebooks and print books

[Brian G Turner]

Author Earnings report for February 2016 provides a 23 month snapshot on the state of ebook and print book sales - and the pattern is truly shocking:
February 2016 Author Earnings Report: Amazon’s Ebook, Print, and Audio Sales – Author Earnings

 

[Juliana]

Small/medium publisher sales holding pretty steady, I see.

 

[ralphkern]

Interesting data. Clearly this is just Amazon, which is the go-to place for Indie books and therefore will be heavily weighted towards them. I understand that Amazon has around 20% of the market share total at the moment.

I would suggest the other 80% market share will mostly comprise of Big five, small and medium published work, with the Indies and single authors vanishing into statistical insignificance,

The recent successes of The Martian and Wayward Pines may also have had an influence, opening peoples minds to just what is out there (albeit those books themselves are now TP).

We truly live in interesting times.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Vox Day may have a bias since he moved into indie publishing, but this message is something I keep seeing repeated:
Vox Popoli: Why they're terrified

they [traditional publishers] are bringing literally nothing to the table for me any longer. The Big Five theoretically still have advantages, but what is the use of having a formidable retail distribution infrastructure when there are no bookstores to carry your product? What is the use of being able to sell into Barnes & Noble when the retailer has cut down the size of the genre section to one-tenth of what it used to be?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I understand that Amazon has around 20% of the market share total at the moment.

They used to have 90% of eBooks, they are down to 60% of eBooks, hence the MASSIVE pushing of "KDP Select" monopoly program.

On eBooks, the actual publisher isn't as significant as with paper books, especially paper in a bookshop?

What is the use of being able to sell into Barnes & Noble when the retailer has cut down the size of the genre section to one-tenth of what it used to be?

SF is tiny compared to Fantasy in Easons here. Both dominated by a few top selling authors with multiple titles. Both are dwarfed by maybe x50 space to everything else. General, Romance, Detective, Thrillers etc has hugely more space than anything else.

 

[Brian G Turner]

As mentioned in another thread, Are publishers aiming for volume sales, rather than profit?, the May 2016 AuthorEarnings report is out: May 2016 Author Earnings Report: the definitive million-title study of US author earnings – Author Earnings

The point is made that authors can earn an income without breaking into strong ranking positions.

And it's underlined here: Joanna Penn is one of those SP authors with no ISBN, and no striking sales rankings - so is normally absent from these stats - but earned $96,000 from her ebooks over the past year: Almost Six Figures. My Breakdown Of One Year Of Book Sales By Format, Vendor, Genre, And Country

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Breakdown by vendor
It won’t be a surprise to see that Amazon still dominates, making up 56% of my book sales income through KDP, Createspace and ACX (Audible).

But that is a LOT less than many authors, especially those in KDP Select, and a lot less than many traditional publishers. It is also down on last year’s Amazon total percentage of 74%.

Yes. KDP Select is a personal choice, but in the long run giving one retailer a monopoly on all eBooks will be a disaster for authors and readers.
Note that Kobo, Apple and Nook sales can be via your Smashwords Account.
Your Smashwords ebook Page allows a link to CreateSpace, or any paper retailer (multiple links). Amazon do not allow such links.
That's why I'm on Amazon, CreateSpace and Smashwords.

 

[Vertigo]

Interestingly Andy Weir in his presentation (linked in another thread The Martian, by Andy Weir) states "Amazon actually loses money selling Kindles" and goes on to say they make their money by selling the ebooks. I've wondered about this before and I know you, @Ray McCarthy, think it unlikely and I'm not sure Weir has any greater access to that info than we do, but it's interesting that he was prepared to make that statement in a public presentation that was being filmed. It does, to my mind, fit strongly with what I perceive to be their drive to be the sole supplier of ebooks. Bear in mind that if Kobo and Nook go down the tubes they may well get their wish. I know there are other ways to read epub but the harder it gets the less they will sell. And when it's all AZW Amazon will pretty much have closed that market completely.

Bear in mind the context in which Weir was discussing this was that he had provided his book completely for free as an ebook on his website but people actually stated to him that they preferred to pay the 99 cents for the convenience of letting their kindle do all the 'work' of getting the book for them.

 

[Kieran Song]

One thing about the indie publishing thing I noticed, it's way tougher to break into and hit critical mass for scifi and fantasy--especially if you're building an audience from the ground up.

I guess kdp select is there to try and help you build your audience from the ground up.

*sigh* it was a lot easier building an audience when I was writing romance

 

[Ray McCarthy]

think it unlikely

They may be losing slightly on the basic Kindle Touch, but the Voyager and Oasis are absolutely above cost. I'm sceptical that the PaperWhite is below cost, but it's hard to be sure.

The DXG at the last sale period were below cost because those were for a failed Universities text book program.

Bear in mind that if Kobo and Nook go down the tubes they may well get their wish. I know there are other ways to read epub

Most eBooks are now read on phones, followed by tablets, then dedicated eink readers (Kindle, Kobo, Nook), I think lowest is now laptops / PCs.
Anyone using ebooks ought to be using Calibre to organise and backup. NEVER rely on a vendor's "cloud".

Calibre converts all common formats and can remove evil Adobe DRM extensions to ePub or AZW DRM, via plugins for personal use.
I read Amazon DRM AZW as ePub on my phone when I don't have the Kobo or Kindle DXG handy. I have AZW and ePub on my Kindle DXG and Kobo Aura H2O HD via Calibre.

Publishers can do content on Amazon or elsewhere without DRM.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I guess kdp select is there to try and help you build your audience from the ground up.

No, it won't make a huge difference and locks you out of 40% of the market. It's Amazon propaganda. the Select program exists purely to remove content from other eBook retailers. Same reason that Netflix or Sky pay for exclusivity.

 

[Brian G Turner]

"Amazon actually loses money selling Kindles"

I think this was stated at least when Amazon released the Kindle Fire tablets.

I guess kdp select is there to try and help you build your audience from the ground up.

Quite agree - it's potentially useful for building up an audience, not least through reviews generated by people who borrowed it through Kindle Unlimited or Prime memberships.

 

[Vertigo]

Anyone using ebooks ought to be using Calibre to organise and backup. NEVER rely on a vendor's "cloud".

I agree with you but my experience is only a minority do. The only people I know who use ebooks and Calibre are right here online. Everyone else that I know who reads eBooks relies absolutely on Amazon (and it is Amazon in each case) to keep their books and always go to Amazon to buy. Crazy in my opinion but the general comment is "Oh I can't be bothered with all that fuss, I just download straight from Amazon to my app/Kindle." Most do not even realise that the ebooks they are downloading are in a proprietary Amazon format and frankly don't care so long as they can read them.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

don't care so long as they can read them

Yes.
Frightening to me that it's mostly on "phones" too. My best beta reader reads everything on his phone!

 

[Vertigo]

Yeah I do read 'in extremis' on my phone but have to say I hate it with a vengeance.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Just to add, something I think is being underlined in many of these discussions about self-publishing is that it is self-employment - and needs to be thought of in these terms.

 

[Ronald T.]

Author Earnings report for February 2016 provides a 23 month snapshot on the state of ebook and print book sales - and the pattern is truly shocking:
February 2016 Author Earnings Report: Amazon’s Ebook, Print, and Audio Sales – Author Earnings

Thanks for the thread, Brian. I've found the "Author Earnings Report" to be a fascinating and educational resource over the past couple of years. I just try to balance what they report by doing as much other research on the matter as possible. As hard as these reports try to give an accurate and fully factual accounting, they can't possibly cover all the necessary elements, even when they try. There are so many variables that make these reports a series of estimates. But they are very helpful, nonetheless. I applaud their commitment to creating this information, and for not charging people to access it. That's quite an honorable thing to do.

 

[Theophania Elliott]

More interesting data from Data Guy here - the document is only the top-level data, about the split between indie/trad and paper/digital in various sectors of the market, but for the first time ever, or so they say, the data includes Amazon data and Nielsen data. So for the first time, we're looking at a picture of the entire US book market. Accuracy is, of course, unknown, but I would not expect major inaccuracy: I think we can take this as a reasonable accurate impression.

I found it particularly interesting because according to this, 71% of the adult fiction market is now digital (despite tradpub and the newspapers going on about how ebooks are dying and everyone's going back to paper), and 30% of that market is indie. Note that it's not 30% of the digital 71%, but 30% of the entire US adult fiction market.

I find myself wondering what tradpub is going to do about this, because it demonstrates pretty clearly that indies are cutting into their market share in a nonsignificant way. Given the growth of digital, probably because tradpub's digital prices are so high. Will they continue sticking their fingers in their ears until the ship sinks underneath them (mixed metaphors, pah!) or will this serve as a wake-up call?

I'm looking forward to seeing the detailed data that will be presented at the DBW conference - I hope they make it available online.

 

[Vertigo]

Does anyone have absolute year on year figures? I wonder whether the trad publishers losing market share to the indies means they have lost volume or whether the indie market is actually a new market. It's quite possible that more people are reading now it has become somewhat cheaper with the low indie prices.

I have to say I'm worried by this trend; I have tried a good number of indie books and the majority of those have been at best worse quality than the books I get from the trad publishers and at worst completely unreadable (by my standards at least). And I don't just mean typos and other proof editing issues, though those do drive me mad, but simply very low quality story telling and writing.

 

[Theophania Elliott]

Does anyone have absolute year on year figures?

Not as far as I know - I think Data Guy at Author Earnings comes closest, as he scrapes Amazon every quarter. According to the DBW paper, this is the first time anyone has put Amazon + Nielsen together; the problem being that most indies are selling mostly in digital, and without ISBNs - so the Nielsen data (which is purely done on ISBNs) doesn't capture them at all.

On a purely practical level, I can't imagine that the 30% indie share is 'new market', as this would mean that those readers are completely new to reading. A far more likely explanation is that readers don't care who publishes their books - they care whether the book is good or not. So I think it's more likely that tradpub is losing market share to indies, probably to do with the lower ebook prices charged by indies (when you consider that 71% of the adult fiction market is digital, according to Data Guy).

I hear what you say, though, Vertigo. I want to read more indie books (especially since I've had some disappointing experiences with trad-published books lately) but finding good ones is a problem. This may be partly a function of what I read, though - I like urban fantasy, and most of that genre seems to be paranormal romance at the moment. Fine if you like PNR, but that's not what I want.