Quote:
Originally Posted by Fbone
Do you have a source for this?
Thanks
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BPH financials.
There's several reports that show their revenues are flat over the past decade despite mergers, acquisitions, price hikes, and phasing out mass market paperbacks in favor of more expensive trade paper and hardcovers and the growth of audio and ebooks. In other words, they are selling less books. In parallel to this decline we have the rise of ebooks and especially Indie ebooks into a $2B a year business. Plus Kindle unlimited and Scribd. And since all those reads are cheaper than the BPH product the next implication is more books being read at lower prices.
The subscription services themselves justify the statement inasmuch as there are published reports from Scribd that the average subscriber reads 5 books a month. At $10 for the subscription those reads are coming in at $2 a pop.
Also, KU payouts for 2018 are running on track to exceed $240M in author payouts so if one assumes Amazon pays out all subscription revenue with zero profit (unlikely at this point) that would suggest some 120M full book reads (or equivalent) are taking place on KU, and displace well over a billion dollars worth of purchases. The real number is likely higher.
(There is also corroborating evidence in the Author Earnings reports but since those are fighting words to some around here, I'm sticking to other public sources.)
Nate has several of those reports linked at his website.
If I have time later I can point at some of them. But all they say is that a good chunk of the market has moved their reads to cheaper product while still spending the same or more. So more reading. Romance alone is evidence of that.