Various folks have chimed in with information about numbers shared by Eric Flint, David Drake and other Baen authors. I generally agree with the stuff that they've posted. There are, however, two important things they've glossed over.
First, Jim Baen pointed out (before his untimely death) that eBook sales had increased to a point where they were the second-largest source of income for Baen. That's a (very) distant second to DTF (Dead Tree Format) sales in the U.S., but larger than all foreign sales combined (Canada included). I rather suspect that eBook revenue is still below 10% of the total, though.
Secondly, The eBook sales are profitable. That is, not only do they cover the marginal costs of selling (and marketing, and distribution)... they also cover their pro-rata share of the editorial costs, artwork, development of new authors, and other general overhead. If I correctly understood the explanation (always a big assumption for a tech geek listening to a business discussion
), those pro-rata costs are charged against book sales on a per-sales-dollar basis. This is a big deal! Not just a
marginal profit, but a true profit in the full accounting sense of the word.
That profit does NOT include the clear effect of eBooks in boosting sales of paper books -- typically other items in an author's back-list. It also doesn't include the long-tail effect whereby the electronic edition need never go out of print. And, the profit comes in spite of the fact that all Baen's contracts are for
non-exclusive eBook rights. That's right -- Baen's authors are perfectly free to sell eBooks through Fictionwise, or Sony Connect, or whereever, in competition with Baen's eSales. And they still make a profit for Baen!
Jim Baen used to say that he dreaded the day when 'the big guys' woke up and smelled the coffee. As things stand now, Baen is the only significant player in Fiction (publishers, that is, not distributors like Fictionwise or Sony Connect) in the US that has sane and profitable eBook sales. We'll see how things go in the future.