Quote:
Originally Posted by marcsec
I'm intrigued, however - does anyone know what market share Indies are taking in the marketplace for books? Does anyone track this? Obviously the playing field is changing, but by how much and how quickly?
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Have you been to the AuthorEarnings website?
It has been posting reports on the Amazon side of indie publishing. Indies command about a third of unit sales there. Last year, Nook reported that 25% of their sales are indie. Kobo is probably about the same, Apple and Google less.
Current estimates put indie sales on track for about $1B in sales for 2014. Works out to over 300M books sold. No direct threat to the Randy Penguin but since it represents over $500M in author revenue it is equivalent (from the author side) to some $4B in BPH sales.
Whatever the actual numbers might be, two facts are certain: indies make up a significant portion of the trade book business (especially the genres--most especially romance) and it is still growing. Fast.
As to the value of publishing houses; yes, of course they do provide value. It is declining in proportion to the decline in shelf-space in B&M stores and the increas in ebook penetration but still substantial.
The question that indie publishing poses is whether that value is proportional to the contract terms the BPHs impose on (non-brand name) authors. Things like life of copyright deals, low advances, low royalties based on ill-defined "net", onerous non-compete clauses, extended rights of first refusal (one regional publisher demands 21 years), and lately, some contracts don't even guarantee a print edition.
Smaller publishers are less predatory but the big ones can be very hard on an author's carreer. So, lately, a large portion of newcomers are simply opting not to submit at all and ramp up their brand and readership on their own.