Chip MacGregor: Overall income of authors is down

[Brian G Turner]

Literary agent Chip MacGregor talks about how authors are making less money now across the board - both in trad and indie publishing:

Ask the Agent: Why should we listen to an expert? - MacGregor Literary

The average e-book is way down — many below $5, and often you’ll see a slug of books for 99 cents. That doesn’t leave much for an author. So earnings are down across the board, but they are more spread out among a wider group of authors — that makes it feel as though there’s more money being paid out. Economically, it’s not true. The overall sales numbers are fairly stable the past couple of years. So with all the low priced ebooks and mass market titles earning less per book, the overall income of authors is actually down.

This echoes something I've commented on here previously:

Indie: Is self-publishing driving authors into bargain basement hell?
Trad: Are publishers aiming for volume sales, rather than profit?

We seem to be in a vicious circle where both indie and traditional publishers are being forced to under price in order to compete for attention.

Thoughts?

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

*Coughs* Well if people had bloody pulled out of KU back when Amazon started dropping the payout to below $1.80 per book we wouldn't bloody be here now, would we?

*Puts on her I told you so hat and grouches in the corner*.

 

[HareBrain]

Though it is rather larger than the term "creek" would suggest, one wonders if the Amazon might be the watercourse for which a certain saying was coined. It's certainly brown enough.

 

[tinkerdan]

Sometimes when I read these things it makes me wonder if the whole problem lies in trying to ignore the elephant in the room.
I've read arguments about how Self Publishing is leading to a lot of worthless trash that is under edited and poorly conceived.
This would make one wonder why we would worry about it when we know that readers are going to be looking for good books that are well written.
This has been one main argument.

As a consumer I have to say that my habits can range out there on several levels and I could be part of the problem; however I'm only one person and I've relied heavily on the argument that discerning readers won't read half of the trash that is out there for free and .99 cents. So I've felt I've done little damage through habits built long ago.

I used to visit the local brick and mortar stores looking for the discount table and getting great deals that often were 1 to 5 dollars for a hard bound volumes. Never really wondering how those work out for the authors.

Naturally when I first get the kindle I start filling it with freebees and 99 cent books. [some of which I still haven't read].

I wonder if the traditional publishers thought; we'll just wait for Self Published e-books to fail when these hacks can't get an audience.
Maybe they should have been thinking; great this could reduce our slush piles.

I've really no idea how much extra work it is for a publisher to create an e-book from their work; however I've seen enough problems in formatting and other side issues to suggest they didn't spend enough time to make it look as though they were serious about selling them. The pricing felt as though they enforced that by making it clear that they were going to ask the same and in some places more than they do for the paper-edition. That clearly doesn't make any sense at all from my consumer position.

It might make more sense if someone could actually put the entire information in their posts that include the cost of producing e-books ; the percentage that goes to the seller; the percentage that goes to the publisher; the percentage that goes to the author(percentage to agent). And from there show exactly how it is that the author suffers by reducing the price of the e-book.

Perhaps it is that there are too many pockets to fill.

Whereas on the surface for some it might look as though the self published author has to worry only about what goes into amazons pocket and what remains for them.

Sure there are a lot more expenses to the self-published author (or there should be); however the free and 99 cent books might skirt those costs and it may show up to the reader.

Arguably a larger problem for traditional publishers might exist in those self publishers that do spend the money to make their work better and still keep their prices between 3.99 and 7.99, which undercuts most traditional publisher prices.

Even then there are so many new titles coming out every day that it's easy for any work, traditional or self published, to be buried quickly. And that may seem like a different matter, however it is having an impact on the need to market books smarter and longer.

One way to do that might be to lower the price to entice readers who are simply resistant to paying the top dollars.

Will that ruin the industry? Probably not, however it could shake it up a bit.

But another thing to think about is that if the self-published works are as poorly conceived as advertised(and assuming a lot of those end up in that bargain category) then wouldn't admitting that they have an impact on all book sales be either admitting they are better than advertised or that perhaps the readers are not as discerning as they initially thought.

This is not even mentioning that a large number of those people looking for books in the bargain category may be people who normally don't purchase books at all. Some of these people might be a market that hasn't really been tapped by traditional publishers.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Sadly when you have a business with increasing numbers of producers (in 4 years kindle books have shot from c 600k to 4 million iirc) and decreasing numbers of consumers sadly the producers will earn a smaller pot spread over more people....

Incidentally - the biggest earning losses over the last year or two are traditionally published debut authors. But indie income has fallen for two quarters in a row.

I read a blog a year or so ago that said the indies had done what Amazon wanted them to do - squeeze out the competition. Now that's done Amazon doesn't need the indies so much and will switch focus. Don't know how much truth there is but it made me sit up. Added to that Is Bookbub featuring fewer indies.

Anyhow Inish Carraig goes back in Draft2digital in July (after a brief kdp sojourn for a promo)and will be staying wide from now on.

 

[apocalypsegal]

I read a blog a year or so ago that said the indies had done what Amazon wanted them to do - squeeze out the competition. Now that's done Amazon doesn't need the indies so much and will switch focus.

But people have been saying this for years, even before I started publishing in 2011, and it hasn't happened yet. From all I'm seeing, indies are charging more for their work than they were doing. I remember conversations from six or seven years ago bemoaning the fact that we'd never be able to charge more than .99 for our books, and that never happened. And I'm going to be honest here, and say that articles by people whose livelihood depends on people needing their services aren't really dependable to report things in an unbiased manner. It wouldn't be the first time the sky was falling, when it wasn't.

Just because we don't charge what the trad pubs do (over 12.99 for an ebook, in many cases!) doesn't mean we are failing. I don't worry about those books that are poorly written, unedited and with bad covers. The tsunami of swill that has been trumpeted for nearly a decade hasn't seemed to hurt all that much. Proper presentation and promotion will overcome all that.

After the first 30 days, those things drop down so far, it's almost impossible to find them on a search. What I worry about is that many traditionally published mid list authors, those folks who can write, understand about editing and good covers, are coming into the self pub world and basically getting it done.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

@apocalypsegal - indie income has dropped for the last two quarters, the first time a fall has been noted. The fall appears to be due to a change in discoverability of titles with Amazon algorithms one of the possible reasons. If that trend continues (and anecdotally it does seem to be) then it becomes more worrisome.

(The blog I referred to wasn't selling anything, btw)

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Luckily, it's only money.

 

[tinkerdan]

It would be interesting to see these numbers and how they were derived::

@apocalypsegal - indie income has dropped for the last two quarters, the first time a fall has been noted. The fall appears to be due to a change in discoverability of titles with Amazon algorithms one of the possible reasons. If that trend continues (and anecdotally it does seem to be) then it becomes more worrisome.

(The blog I referred to wasn't selling anything, btw)

::you can be amazed how something can be steered in the right direction just to make a point.
What I mean by that is that if you took the average income of the authors as your base that could show that income has dropped because of a glut as opposed to other factors being highlighted.

If they were somehow showing the total dollars going into indie publishing then you'd have to look at various changes in what has to be paid first before they can call it income and that might have changed rather than other factors being highlighted.

And lastly if they were showing pie charts separating out the indie from traditional and splitting that up further into the big five and small publishing and POD an Self publishing and showing where the dollars go and that they were decreasing for the indie then that would be another thing entirely and would require more information to show exactly how that affects income.

As for discoverability--that's going to keep changing as more authors show up on the scene and and if Amazon changed anything I'd think that they would be changing it to slow the glut problem rather than to now abandon.

I sense that discoverability as used here is more of a buzzword that's used in context to the web and search engines and I would caution that in some venue discoverability is only leading the horse to water. So if you are paying someone to improve your discoverability because you expect the horse to drink, then you could be doomed because you have to have something that will make them thirsty first.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

Notably Amazon's chart curation pushes Amazon-imprint-published titles with vigour.

Strange, that.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Notably Amazon's chart curation pushes Amazon-imprint-published titles with vigour.

Strange, that.

Yes, that is certainly been where some of the lost indie income has gone to - and it may be that the authors there are picking up the slack of the indies, and would be pulled from the indie demograph.

@tinkerdan - the data came from authorearnings.com but is backed up by other outlets.