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BillSmithBooks · 10-20-2012, 01:21 PM

Don't know if anyone remembers this blog post from Mark Coker at Smashwords from two (now nearly three) years ago --

Most Popular Smashwords Formats

I was wondering:

1) If there was any sort of update to see how the market is shifting, format wise

2) Look at some of the interesting data from two years ago: PDF was 35% of the market, Epub 22%, plain text was 9%

I gotta wonder if back then people were downloading lots of PDF and plain text (combined nearly 45% of the market) because they know they could read the texts anywhere.

3) I still have to wonder how HTML/HTML zip would fare as a % of market share if it was offered just simply because it would be the only "universal" format that could be read on almost every device in the world.

4) Looking at the data from 2008-2009, notice how PDF % went UP from 19% in '08-09 to 35% in '10 -- how in the heck did that happen? Maybe readers really just want something simple and easy to use and don't care about the frills nearly as much as the book designers do?

(Sorry for the typo in the title...argh)

10-20-2012, 01:21 PM	#1
BillSmithBooks Padawan Learner Posts: 243 Karma: 1085815 Join Date: May 2009 Location: www.OutlawGalaxy.com, Foothills of NY's Adirondack mountains Device: My PC...using Puppy Linux (FBReader, Calibre, Kindle Cloud Reader,	Most Popualar Formats, Smashwords Don't know if anyone remembers this blog post from Mark Coker at Smashwords from two (now nearly three) years ago -- Most Popular Smashwords Formats I was wondering: 1) If there was any sort of update to see how the market is shifting, format wise 2) Look at some of the interesting data from two years ago: PDF was 35% of the market, Epub 22%, plain text was 9% I gotta wonder if back then people were downloading lots of PDF and plain text (combined nearly 45% of the market) because they know they could read the texts anywhere. 3) I still have to wonder how HTML/HTML zip would fare as a % of market share if it was offered just simply because it would be the only "universal" format that could be read on almost every device in the world. 4) Looking at the data from 2008-2009, notice how PDF % went UP from 19% in '08-09 to 35% in '10 -- how in the heck did that happen? Maybe readers really just want something simple and easy to use and don't care about the frills nearly as much as the book designers do? (Sorry for the typo in the title...argh) Last edited by BillSmithBooks; 10-20-2012 at 01:27 PM.