Author Earnings.com just dropped their quarterly "state of the US ebook market" report.
http://authorearnings.com/report/may...rnings-report/
As usual, the source has clear, very large charts and the raw data. Plus lots of analysis and insight.
Well worth the trip there.
Summary:
Quote:
Publishers fought hard to take back control of ebook pricing from Amazon. This was a stated intent by Hachette to its investors in 2014, and it was touted as the end result of their lengthy negotiations. What has that control brought?
By our data, which matches industry reports, this control has brought higher prices to consumers, lower sales for publishers, and less earnings for their authors. It has also brought greater market share for self-published authors, which is why many were pulling for publishers to get their way during negotiations with Amazon.
If it seems unlikely that publishers would have fought so hard for such disastrous results, it might help to be reminded that it isn’t the first time. In the lawsuit against publishers for conspiring to raise ebook prices in 2009, it was shown that the agreement they fought to win with Apple resulted in a reduction of profits per ebook sold (pg 53). Lawyers were also successful in showing at trial that a move to agency pricing resulted in a sudden and drastic shift upward in ebook prices, harming consumers, but also harming publishers (pg 94).
One does not need to theorize on why publishers would make these decisions. One CEO of a Big 5 publisher wrote in a note to herself that higher prices would slow ebook adoption and casual purchasers, protecting retailers (pg 47). So speculation is not required. This was the same conclusion reached by the judge in the collusion case, whose reading of Big 5 CEO emails showed a willingness to erode Amazon’s market share at any cost, even to themselves.
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Key numbers:
BPH prices up 17% over the last 15 months.
BPH unit market share over the last 3 months down 18% (interesting number--sounds like a tipping point was crossed).
BPH titles in ebook bestseller lists down 26%.
BPH reader spend ($-based market share) down 7% over the last 3 months. They now command less than half of gross ebook sales.
Interesting factoid:
Market share of other tradpubs (small/medium publisher, Amazon Publishing) has remained constant. The net shift has been BPH to Indies.
Ominous note:
Quote:
Barnes & Noble’s Nook store’s well-covered collapse appears to be accelerating. It is now possible to hit the overall Top 50 Best Seller list on Nook.com with fewer than 100 sales per day from a standing start. It takes around 1,500 sales per day to hit the same benchmark on Amazon.com. We currently calculate B&N’s ebook market to be in the single digits, perhaps even the low single digits. No author should be happy with this development, as the more healthy markets that exist for our works, the better.
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