For a
while now, I, like many other writers, have been wondering how well independent
or self-published authors are doing in the ebook market compared to those who
use traditional publishers. There is so much secrecy in the publishing industry
that it is hard to tell. But I have just read a report, written by Hugh Howey,
that suggests indie ebook authors are doing very well when compared to those
who use traditional publishers.
For those
who don’t know, Hugh Howey
is a science-fiction author whose self-published Wool series has sold
millions of ebooks. He was offered a million dollar deal to sign with traditional
publisher Simon and Schuster. The original offer was to distribute Wool
to book retailers across the US and Canada and included the ebook rights. But
Howey decided to keep the ebook rights and took a six figure deal instead.
Howey
recently wrote a report based on data he obtained from a software program that
trawled the web for information on ebooks sales. The data he uses in the report
is from nearly 7,000 ebooks in several genre categories (including science-fiction
and fantasy) on Amazon. The report is simply titled the 7K report and is
available at authorearnings.com.
The report
has several very interesting graphs like the one above. It shows that over half
the ebooks in Amazons bestseller genre lists were indie or self-published. Howey
says the pie chart suggests that the major publishers are not publishing enough
genre fiction, including science-fiction, so the slack is being taken up by
indie and self-publishers.
This is
great news for a science fiction writer like myself who is repeatedly reading
that the science fiction readership is decreasing. It looks like it might be actually
increasing, despite traditional publishers best efforts to ignore it.
The report
reveals many interesting details about ebook publishing on Amazon. For example,
it really pays to be published by Amazon themselves (on 47 North or
equivalent). The pie chart above show Amazon publishers accounting for only 4%
of the titles in the genre bestseller list, but another graph in the report
shows those 4% of ebooks accounting for 15% of the daily ebook sales in those
genres.
If you
were wondering how Amazons ebooks sales compare to their sales of hard backs,
the above pie chart is astounding. It
shows that 86% of the top 2,500 genre bestsellers in the Amazon store are
e-books.
The above
chart helps Howey conclude that genre writers who indie or self-publish are
financially better off than authors who go with traditional publishers, no
matter what the potential of their manuscripts is. If you are a fiction writer,
you have to read the report.
2 comments:
I thought by "indie publishers" you meant small press - independent publishers not owned by conglomerates.
but it looks like you're using it to mean authors who self-publish?
interesting article.
Most authors who self-publish prefer to be called independent publishers. They create their own publisher name to publish under. Writers who don't create a publisher name are usually refered to as self-published. One of the reason self-publishing authors prefer to be thought of as indie publishers instead of self-publishers is that self-publishing used to be very much associated with vanity publishers, who had a reputation of ripping off naive authors and publishing unedited rubbish. But since Amazon created Createspace, a self-publishing platform, and other free self-publishing platforms like Smashwords came into existence, vanity publishing seems to have nearly disappeared.
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