Months of Runaround From KDP Support: Font Embedding Fails...HELP!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ASterling

I looked up apodictic too!

I have to go to school but here is an example of a book that does NOT work on Kindle and I would think there are probably lots of requested refunds, or not-converted "free trials" for it.

http://www.amazon.com/Current-Issues...dp/B00HQO09MC/

This is the current edition of the English 1B textbook that I use. I just downloaded the $30 "free trial" e-text. It's a PDF. I am able to expand it on my Kindle screen, as I have been unable with a number of other documents. It immediately pixelates so I'm sure all you experienced formatters know what that means - it's at 72 DPI.

I honestly am going to school but download the "free" trial version of the $30 e-text from one of the biggest publishers. I couldn't teach out of this or with students using this.

Yes:

Well, of course. "Print Replica" is essentially a PDF, slapped inside a wrapper that makes it a Kindle file. And you're going to have exactly the experience you've described, if the publisher provided Amazon with a crap PDF to begin with. That's not a "converted" eBook. That's...that's a low-quality PDF disguised as an eBook. It's pretending.

Does that help?

(And guys, sorry if apodictic was a problem, but it seemed apt to the proposition about Kindle sales #'s.)

Hitch

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by Hitch

You know, that guy at the KDP forums keeps blathering on about that 60-something-percent figure as if it's apodictic. It's not. It's just blather. Nobody KNOWS what the real numbers are, and they never will.

From the Wall Street Journal today (page B4):

Amazon "accounted for 64% of the U.S. e-book market by units sold, during the second quarter, according to Codex."

(That's Codex Group LLC, whose website doesn't tell me much except that they're located in NYC.)

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well, of course. "Print Replica" is essentially a PDF, slapped inside a wrapper that makes it a Kindle file. And you're going to have exactly the experience you've described, if the publisher provided Amazon with a crap PDF to begin with. That's not a "converted" eBook. That's...that's a low-quality PDF disguised as an eBook. It's pretending.

Thirded on how bad "Print Replica" is on mobile devices.

"Print Replica" is an AZW4 format which is pretty much a PDF in a wrapper. You can read a tiny bit more about it on the MobileRead Wiki:

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/AZW4

I see it having the same failings as PDF: you just can't physically cram 6"x9", 7"x10", 8.5"x11", [...], into a tiny screen... the text would have to be redesigned with reflowability in mind!

Originally Posted by Hitch

(And guys, sorry if apodictic was a problem, but it seemed apt to the proposition about Kindle sales #'s.)

Apodictic is one of my favorite words!

Here it is in Chapter 12 of Human Action, one of the greatest economic treatises of the 20th century:

As it is impossible to establish the total amount of money spent at a given fraction of time for consumers’ goods, statisticians must rely upon the prices paid for individual commodities. This raises two further problems for which there is no apodictic solution. It becomes necessary to attach to the various commodities coefficients of importance. It would be manifestly wrong to let the prices of various commodities enter into the computation without taking into account the different roles they play in the total system of the individuals’ households. But the establishment of such proper weighting is again arbitrary. [...]

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

From the Wall Street Journal today (page B4):

Amazon "accounted for 64% of the U.S. e-book market by units sold, during the second quarter, according to Codex."

(That's Codex Group LLC, whose website doesn't tell me much except that they're located in NYC.)

Meh. I looked at their website, fairly thoroughly, and see no way that would indicate how on earth they'd calculate that. They all come out of trade-pubbing (which means...a definite skew on the view), and how *would* they "count" sales?

By trade-publishers, through Books In print--which only tracks books that have ISBNs? Amazon's not saying; nor does anyone else report on this. It's daft. And I'll say--without blinking--that number is bollocks. 64%? Nyet. I don't have a single client selling under 80% on Amazon, in terms of total sales and as I said, most are far greater, even those distributing via LSI, IS, BookBaby, etc.

Hitch

[ASterling]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Meh. I looked at their website, fairly thoroughly, and see no way that would indicate how on earth they'd calculate that. They all come out of trade-pubbing (which means...a definite skew on the view), and how *would* they "count" sales?

By trade-publishers, through Books In print--which only tracks books that have ISBNs? Amazon's not saying; nor does anyone else report on this. It's daft. And I'll say--without blinking--that number is bollocks. 64%? Nyet. I don't have a single client selling under 80% on Amazon, in terms of total sales and as I said, most are far greater, even those distributing via LSI, IS, BookBaby, etc.

Hitch

Codex Group is Peter Hildick-Smith - we consulted with him when we started out and could work with him again if we decide to go that route/it seems right. He is extremely knowledgeable. He is a former Marketing VP for Del Rey and launched the natural product line for Quaker and his partner is a Wharton MBA with lots of additional marketing experience. He not only has experience, he performs ongoing analysis of the records that are available (granted, they are awful and incomplete). Volume-wise, e-books in general, are probably between 15 and 20% of the total book market. In this, I don't mean just trade publishing (where they are still about 25%), I mean all things put in book form - trade, educational, technical, religious, everything. Peter understands everything we say about marketing and agrees with us. Where we part with him is that he is all about refining marketing for current products and current audiences. That's great for the former Harlequin or any other well-recognized genre/type of book - not so good in a lot of other areas.

I showed y'all that homely PDF book for a reason. The actual text is the most-adopted of its type in North America (probably English-speaking world) in general. It is from what I call "BDSM" - Bedford/St. Martins - a subdivision of Macmillan. It probably ships a million units each semester. Obviously there is a big need for this book to be in electronic form and usable by students. A low-adopted, more specialized text with the same editor for Pearson ships 50,000 books per semester. Out of those numerous students who HAVE TO BUY THIS BOOK either new or used, a tremendous number would buy the e-book I got the "free trial" of, if it were even remotely usable. That is a vast amount of money and would bump up e-book sales hugely. This book cannot be used as intended in present flowable ePub form. New methods are needed if that technology or system is desired.

Now, do you understand what I am saying?

Hitch, if you could make such books work, you would probably have zero business complaints because you wouldn't be "white labeling" smaller projects. You could charge high prices for what an excellent book designer does for a print book and charge for updates on a continuous basis.

It should go without saying this is a lot of work and very intensive work.

I surveyed my students in a 33-member class today. Out of the group, 3 used Kindles - two used much older ones, and one had a Kindle Fire. This is *very* unusual. The two older ones were "hand me downs" from older relatives. So 10% of the group, average age 19 or 20, and all said they used the devices to read for pleasure, never for school. They all said they use paper textbooks for school.

In this case, the situation isn't that educators are stupid and stuck on the old paper books and don't "get it." The difference between pleasure reading of a novel or popular non-fiction book with few or no illustrations, and what happens with a textbook (note taking, questions, workbooks, etc) is vast.

[ASterling]

Also, for my own self (because I am a business consultant and developer) I comped WalMart and Amazon book sales. WalMart's department sales are pretty transparent. WalMart also sells online - WalMart online is not an inconsiderable concern.

WalMart's book department is bigger than its games and small electronics department in terms of volume sales. WalMart's total book department sales, which include online orders and in-store sales, were about 30% more than my estimate of what Amazon did across the board for books in 2014. I mean - Amazon's paper book shipments, and e-book sales. WalMart does not carry a huge number of SKUs but it does carry more books (paper) online than it does in its stores. I was actually shocked to determine this. I would never have thought WalMart would do more volume and cash in books than Amazon. But that appears to be the case. It's based on a) how many stores do they have? A billion!; b) how are book purchases made there? Well, mostly impulse buys - similar to books bought in supermarkets and drugstores - no one goes to WalMart exclusively to buy a book; c) their eCommerce division is no joke - they are more than aware of Amazon and are not going to lie around and lose business.

What I'm saying is - of course we put the books we CAN on Kindle and would like to serve customers well there. One gentleman responded to my query on the Kindle boards and the book he'd done, a history of the space program, was amazing and fantastic. He had conquered various persistent, consistent challenges. Frankly, he blew me away. The time and effort, whether or not he paid for it or it was his own "volunteer" labor - was unbelievable. About like putting out a giant textbook like Current Issues and Enduring Questions. That's 3 editors, heaven knows how many contributing writers, about 150 instructor reviewers, and an editorial and production team of about 50 people.

Then you have "write your Kindle book in a day and have it on sale tonight!" It's a different medium, different purpose.

WalMart tends to sell tried-and-true books in basic categories, and also books seldom carried in Barnes & Noble - like religious books/biographies.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ASterling

Codex Group is Peter Hildick-Smith - we consulted with him when we started out and could work with him again if we decide to go that route/it seems right. He is extremely knowledgeable. He is a former Marketing VP for Del Rey and launched the natural product line for Quaker and his partner is a Wharton MBA with lots of additional marketing experience. He not only has experience, he performs ongoing analysis of the records that are available (granted, they are awful and incomplete). Volume-wise, e-books in general, are probably between 15 and 20% of the total book market. In this, I don't mean just trade publishing (where they are still about 25%), I mean all things put in book form - trade, educational, technical, religious, everything. Peter understands everything we say about marketing and agrees with us. Where we part with him is that he is all about refining marketing for current products and current audiences. That's great for the former Harlequin or any other well-recognized genre/type of book - not so good in a lot of other areas.

I'm not saying that they are not knowledgeable; I'm saying that none of the big eBook retailers "tell." Amazon doesn't publish figures, not really; B&N doesn't; Sony doesn't. Kobo doesn't. Apple's claims are hysterically funny to anyone in the biz. I don't think that SW does. So...who's left? How can they even come up with rough guesses? They have to pull sales figures from BIP or other locations, which MEANS, by and large, trade-pubbed books with ISBN's. There are millions of books on Amazon--and many, many, MANY, have no ISBNs. Ditto on B&N, Apple, etc. (And, what about Harlequin, speaking of? And their sales? From their own website?)

I showed y'all that homely PDF book for a reason. The actual text is the most-adopted of its type in North America (probably English-speaking world) in general. It is from what I call "BDSM" - Bedford/St. Martins - a subdivision of Macmillan. It probably ships a million units each semester. Obviously there is a big need for this book to be in electronic form and usable by students. A low-adopted, more specialized text with the same editor for Pearson ships 50,000 books per semester. Out of those numerous students who HAVE TO BUY THIS BOOK either new or used, a tremendous number would buy the e-book I got the "free trial" of, if it were even remotely usable. That is a vast amount of money and would bump up e-book sales hugely. This book cannot be used as intended in present flowable ePub form. New methods are needed if that technology or system is desired.

Now, do you understand what I am saying?

Yes, of course I understand. I'm not daft. I've ordered the book for free for 7 days, and I'll see what's what. I don't know what's inside it that is so onerous, (yet....) but my EDUCATED guess is, Macmillan went to Amazon. Amazon converted it for them. (that's not a guess, BTW). Amazon did what was essentially easiest--they put it into the PDF wrapper. Now, mind you: Amazon does this for FREE. McMillan has a stranglehold on the book--and all those tens of thousands of readers don't really have an option, but to put up with this crap quality, right? It ain't like they're going to defect to a book put out by somebody else--they have no choice.

So here's the question: what's MacMillan's incentive to pay someone like us a (relatively) small fortune to make the book properly? When Amazon will, without blinking, make it for free? Believe me, I've looked into educational book publishing. It's the last really untouched eBook frontier. But I've not found ANY way into any of these publishers, and no way into any of the 90-bajillion buying/bidding processes for the districts that BUY these books. All US school textbooks are APPROVED, let's not forget. Each one goes through years of writing, editing, typesetting, and then are approved by various and sundry schoolboards.

Hitch, if you could make such books work, you would probably have zero business complaints because you wouldn't be "white labeling" smaller projects. You could charge high prices for what an excellent book designer does for a print book and charge for updates on a continuous basis.

Yup, that would indeed be lovely.

It should go without saying this is a lot of work and very intensive work.

We've done books that are thousands of pages. We've done automotive parts catalogs, medical textbooks, workout books with 997 images (really)...I'll have to look at it, but...

I surveyed my students in a 33-member class today. Out of the group, 3 used Kindles - two used much older ones, and one had a Kindle Fire. This is *very* unusual. The two older ones were "hand me downs" from older relatives. So 10% of the group, average age 19 or 20, and all said they used the devices to read for pleasure, never for school. They all said they use paper textbooks for school.

Well...hard to know what's cause, versus what's effect, here.

In this case, the situation isn't that educators are stupid and stuck on the old paper books and don't "get it." The difference between pleasure reading of a novel or popular non-fiction book with few or no illustrations, and what happens with a textbook (note taking, questions, workbooks, etc) is vast.

Yes, of course it is. I would never think that they are remotely the same.

Thanks--I'll look at it and report back to y'all, as folks in the South say.

Hitch

[Hitch]

Update: I've reviewed a chunk of the book. There's nothing here that we haven't already done. It's just not that complicated.

I would expect that the index would be problematic, and putting in the faux-real page numbers (embedded, I mean) so that a classroom could discuss "item X on page Y," without all the Kindle users getting confused. But that's "just" a page-map. A lot of work, yes--but not undoable.

I just don't see anything else that honestly, even gives me pause. There are tables, lists, fonts...the usual for a firm accustomed to dealing with more-complex books.

FWIW.
Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well...hard to know what's cause, versus what's effect, here.

I concur.

In my experience, most of the books used in many classes have no proper ebook versions of the books, or if they do offer any sort of digital version of the book, it is mangled with problems.

Here are some of the cons of the digital versions:

• PDF
  
  • If they do offer this, it is typically only sold on the publisher's website
    
    • No competition (can't purchase from B&N, Amazon, [...]) or places where you may already have an account.
  • Typically locked down with draconian DRM and limitations
    
    • Sometimes no Copy/Paste, no Exporting text, no Highlighting, no Printing, [...])
  • Can't scale well on all devices (phone, ereader, [...]).
    
• HTML
  
  • They are typically locked down in draconian DRM
    
  • Typically have "renting" or Semester/Yearly/Limited access to the site.
    
    • Or if the site/publisher dies, you lose access to your digital book.
  • Locked in some sort of proprietary system/website.
    
    • Sometimes no Copy/Paste, no Exporting text, no Highlighting, no Printing, MUST be online and logged into their accounts to use, [...].
      
    • May use a proprietary reading system
      
      • I ran into this in a few cases in college. Linux was my main OS, and guess what wouldn't run in Linux/Firefox! Needed IE and Windows. I assume now this problem is even more prevalent with Android/iOS.
        
  • Aren't able to read on what you are comfortable with (phone, ereader, [...]).
    
    • Might be heavily reliant on Flash and/or may not be designed as Mobile friendly.
• EPUB/MOBI
  
  • IF they even offer a proper ebook version of the text, qualities may vary greatly.
    
    • High quality
      
    • Medium quality (exported right out of InDesign/Quark)
      
      • Typically these books are still designed as PRINT FIRST, with ebook as just an afterthought.
        
      • Might be full of crappy/buggy CSS, etc. etc.
        
    • Complete crap (horrible OCR or conversion).
      
      • Low quality images.
        
      • Low resolution + impossible to read Charts/Graphs.
        
      • Images of Tables.
        
      • [...]
        

Typically these digital versions are the same price, barely cheaper, or sometimes EVEN MORE than the physical. Why pay for this when in many cases are getting an inferior and mangled product?

Also, you may find used copies of the physical version for much cheaper than the digital version of the book. The physical version can be resold if need be to recoup SOME of the cost (as mentioned above, the discount between ebook + physical doesn't always exist, or isn't enough).

This doesn't touch the whole "page number" thing either (I have written quite a bit about this previously... I think referencing page numbers should go the way of the dodo . A handful of words in a search leads you to anywhere in the book).

Given this, in many cases I would painfully settle on a physical copy of the book over a locked down or broken digital version. (And again, this is EVEN IF they offer a proper digital copy of the book in the format I want!)

I would take a proper digital copy of the book over the physical any day of the week... the problem is, most of the time there is no proper digital copy!

[ASterling]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Update: I've reviewed a chunk of the book. There's nothing here that we haven't already done. It's just not that complicated.

I would expect that the index would be problematic, and putting in the faux-real page numbers (embedded, I mean) so that a classroom could discuss "item X on page Y," without all the Kindle users getting confused. But that's "just" a page-map. A lot of work, yes--but not undoable.

I just don't see anything else that honestly, even gives me pause. There are tables, lists, fonts...the usual for a firm accustomed to dealing with more-complex books.

FWIW.
Hitch

I knew I had come across real experts! OK, everyone has identified many problems, and Hitch, it shows you have some potential solutions.

All the textbook companies use Adobe products (as do I) and there are a finite number of book designers that work for them. Occasionally, they do hire out. Wiley does so more than the others.

I know the editors and publishers at a lot of these - for this particular book, I know the main actual editor (Sylvan Barnet).

It is my belief that Amazon doesn't "get" or understand the kind of volume they could do or the entry points for their devices and "content" that is possible by having actual textbooks be easily downloaded and used. We are talking massive volume - multiple editions per-quarter or semester -

Probably the device/platform where the biggest entry points are present is Apple. We work with them and I have to say in our experience, for books that are right in iBooks, their numbers are correct. They will sell in a 1:2 ratio vs. Kindle (1 iBook for every 2 Kindle books sold).

For the actual volume numbers - all books - not just e-books - I derived the WalMart vs. Amazon numbers off their quarterly reports and Hoovers. WalMart reports total by-department sales once a year. So the book department is accounted for on its own. No additional calculations required. I called them and they confirmed that their e-commerce and in-store sales are combined together. For Amazon, I had a major confusion with their financial statements for a long time. It turns out that "media" sales reported in their statements includes *everything*. This is like all downloads, magazines, everything that's delivered for a price across their platforms and devices. It did *not* include the cloud services, which are under "other." Bottom line, their total of all that is less than WalMart's total of its games/software and book sales. It is almost impossible to break out the book-only totals for Amazon. However, I think it is about $6.5 billion - that's just cracking it off their total reported worldwide "Media" sales of $22.5 billion.

The overall book publishing and sales market worldwide is about $160 billion right now (as per the European Book Publishers Association). So at about $6.5 billion, Amazon's total book sales are about 5% of the total world book publishing market. Yet from all the heat, light and everything else, one would think it is 100% of book sales, everyone is reading e-books on Kindle only ...

Peter Hildick-Smith has been saying for a long time that e-books are going to top out at no more than 25% of the TRADE book market (what is being formatted/what consists of the Kindle sales - trade fiction & nonfiction). Peter is right. There is no evidence that's growing and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is only so much that the current group of device users and consumers can "consume" of the type of product that the devices can deliver.

Another type of product that could be consumed, and in fact - there is a tremendous hunger and need for - is what we have been discussing. Textbooks. I have students also buying/needing "other" books that fit in the trade sector.

That "topped out" figure would change a lot, and fast, I think, if the books that are needed for many reasons (technical, educational, work-related, skill related) could be delivered well via e-reading devices. And, there are other, entertainment or enjoyment purposes as well.

The original Amazon Kindle build engineer (his patent was just made public - now everybody wants him) is our "CTO". He swore to me up and down this device was supposed to do everything - the hardware was built to reproduce a book that could include color photos, audio, video, you name it. But that's not the reality. The reality is I just saw discussions where the "converter" is stripping fonts out of books! I could comment about the way the e-device displays leading and handles a lot of things. Because there's been many years between Chris' original work and the original team's work and what is there today.

And the NY Times just reported how Amazon treats employees (Chris was hospitalized at the end of his project after too many 'calls from Jeff'). I can't even get the dude on the phone who volunteered to help me put my short fiction on the early Kindle sales stuff - if he's survived over 10 years with them, that explains, maybe he can't even use a phone any more!

Be that as it may. Heck yes there is a market for good electronic versions of textbooks that can be read on devices in class with page maps etc.

[ASterling]

Oh! First off - please understand that we, as a company, are devoted to moving writing and reading forward in general.

So some books we would do would be print-only. Others would be electronic-only. We have published a book that I think I'd rather not personally repeat in terms of what we went through to make the da*m* thing. It's "everything" all in one volume.

I think for the purposes of saving trees and a lot of other reasons, having more flexibility in electronic texts would be fantastic. Our technology is definitely out of sync with various forms of communication/learning. I think the Kindle is absolutely a big, very important platform, and it could be a lot bigger. I know I sound sometimes as though I am "at war with Amazon" and maybe I am. The war started this spring when I entered the world of attempting to put a non-traditional (i.e. not text-only) book for sale via Kindle.

Hello.

And it's not "my problem." It's not traditional publishers' "problem." It's READERS' problem.

Right now, the Kindle is like a giant mass market paperback from "back in the day." Those small paperbacks evolved as light entertainment, able to be produced and sold very cheaply. Well right now, the cost is basically zero to Amazon for unlimited "content" but the content is worth for the most part - less than those little 25 cent trade paperbacks or "dime novels" back in the day.

That is NOT books. Books are so far from dead - if they were dead, there wouldn't be courses in "how to read a book a day" or overviews of the books read by rich entrepreneurs or those millions of texts sold.

So that is where I'm coming from. Thank you for being courteous, helpful and generous with your time and efforts, experts.

The "History of the Space" program book was very impressive and very good. I hope the author is doing great with it. It could have benefited from a pro editor, though. It was a little "heavy" in some ways/light in others. This is where a team comes in - this is the big problem with "write it yourself, pay a stranger to edit it, pay some other stranger to do a cover, slap it down and sell it and on to the next." Even for those light entertainment books.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ASterling

I knew I had come across real experts! OK, everyone has identified many problems, and Hitch, it shows you have some potential solutions.

Well, there are a large number of "formatters" who will only do something like fiction. They are not, in my view, real professionals. I don't blame them, mind you; every formatter will tell you that they'd love to have a full docket of fiction. It's nice and easy. But the hardcores like Tex2002ans, etc., will tell you that the challenges are in doing this type of work.

All the textbook companies use Adobe products (as do I) and there are a finite number of book designers that work for them. Occasionally, they do hire out. Wiley does so more than the others.

Well, we use INDD. I know some of the others do, too. We do INDD intake, assuming that the product is done professionally. Now that the Adobe products are available cheaply in the "cloud," (ahem..on a damned server, don't know why on earth anyone uses "in the cloud," other than marketing purposes), every Tom, Dick and Harry is using it, and we've gotten some really FUGLY files. I mean, just horrible. So, we do INDD intake when the files are correct. I assume that the others do, too.

I know the editors and publishers at a lot of these - for this particular book, I know the main actual editor (Sylvan Barnet).

Well, then, you ought to tell them that there are ways to make the content viable. Assuming that the part of the book I saw is representative, it really ought not be made in a PDF. That's daft. I'm attaching three screenshots of a book that we did...last year, IIRC. It's not dissimilar. (n.b.: mods: not pimping here. This is a discussion about whether or not a textbook like the one discussed previously is "doable." These screenshots simply represent a Kindle/MOBI book that's been done that is similar. The book in question had 1200 pages, or thereabouts--and no, it wasn't a $200 book, obviously. It also had hundreds of lists, tables, text-boxes and images. So many images we had to optimize them all as PNG8.)

It is my belief that Amazon doesn't "get" or understand the kind of volume they could do or the entry points for their devices and "content" that is possible by having actual textbooks be easily downloaded and used. We are talking massive volume - multiple editions per-quarter or semester -

Amazon "gets" it, but...why is it their job to make sure that their publishers make the books correctly, or to ensure that their publishers aren't so cheap that they take the freebie way out, instead of the paid way? Doing a book properly, like this, takes MONEY. Whether they pay someone in-house, or they pay a company like mine, it's not going to be free. I mean, haven't they done enough for the publisher by doing the Textbook format for freebs? A book like the one I showed you is going to be thousands of dollars to do. Compared to nought. Publisher's choice.

Probably the device/platform where the biggest entry points are present is Apple. We work with them and I have to say in our experience, for books that are right in iBooks, their numbers are correct. They will sell in a 1:2 ratio vs. Kindle (1 iBook for every 2 Kindle books sold).

Sure, because Apple's reader isn't a dedicated e-reader; it's effectively a tablet with reading software. They have the luxury of being Apple, and ignoring the standards, while they're at it. They've put out software expressly designed to create textbooks, that works solely on their platform, so...sure, the textbooks made with iBooks look and work pretty great. They're more interactive. Lots to be said for that. Lots to be said against it (e.g., you can't use the same file for Nook, or Sony, or anyone else, even Kobo, which is effectively an iBooks Mini-Me.)

For the actual volume numbers - all books - not just e-books - I derived the WalMart vs. Amazon numbers off their quarterly reports and Hoovers. WalMart reports total by-department sales once a year. So the book department is accounted for on its own. No additional calculations required. I called them and they confirmed that their e-commerce and in-store sales are combined together. For Amazon, I had a major confusion with their financial statements for a long time. It turns out that "media" sales reported in their statements includes *everything*. This is like all downloads, magazines, everything that's delivered for a price across their platforms and devices. It did *not* include the cloud services, which are under "other." Bottom line, their total of all that is less than WalMart's total of its games/software and book sales. It is almost impossible to break out the book-only totals for Amazon. However, I think it is about $6.5 billion - that's just cracking it off their total reported worldwide "Media" sales of $22.5 billion.

Given that WalMart doesn't sell eBooks, isn't that a bit (no pun intended) Apples to Oranges?

The overall book publishing and sales market worldwide is about $160 billion right now (as per the European Book Publishers Association). So at about $6.5 billion, Amazon's total book sales are about 5% of the total world book publishing market. Yet from all the heat, light and everything else, one would think it is 100% of book sales, everyone is reading e-books on Kindle only ...

Even my international clients, some of whom are publishing super-stars, are all Amazon, all the time. Amazon may not be the biggest kid on the block in print (don't know), but I have only ONE client, with a book on self-hypnosis, that does well on iBooks. it does nothing on Nook (which, interestingly enough, seems to do well with Literary Fiction), but all the rest are doing a highly disproportionate ratio on Amazon.

I also think that you have to consider that to be accurate, in terms of Amazon's market share, you have to compare not "world-wide" figures, but Amazon's figures to the sales figures of those countries in which it is present. For example, if Book Sales worldwide include, say, Iceland (which has the most books per capita in the world, ALLEGEDLY, if you believe the meme that's rampant on the Net), and Amazon's not in that marketplace, then the figures are statistically corrupt. You need to compare Amazon's sales with US Sales, Canadian Sales, UK sales, Italian Sales, etc. Otherwise, the numbers really don't add up, to coin a phrase.

Peter Hildick-Smith has been saying for a long time that e-books are going to top out at no more than 25% of the TRADE book market (what is being formatted/what consists of the Kindle sales - trade fiction & nonfiction). Peter is right. There is no evidence that's growing and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is only so much that the current group of device users and consumers can "consume" of the type of product that the devices can deliver.

If a country doesn't have B&N, doesn't have Amazon, that leaves iBooks and Sony, both of which are, in terms of books, minor players. (And before all the Jobblesheads get hysterical, I mean, vis-a-vis Apple, simply BOOK sales in the iBookstore.) How can we compare the "reality" of what percentage of books will be put out in TRADE, if we're comparing two unrelated things?

The world market will, of course, be skewed toward print, because many (MANY) countries have no e-readers, no platforms, nada. They can only obtain their books in print, or by reading on their smartphones, assuming that they have those, and have a way to buy books from iBooks or Google or..?. That's hardly viable, statistically speaking.

In 20 years, who's to say what the numbers will be, when Amazon, et al, have expanded into those countries? When their languages are supported? When they can buy devices? Right now, you're comparing a world with thousands of languages against a platform that is predominantly English, with a mere smattering of (mostly) Euro-based languages that can be displayed or supported. What about languages that are read R-to-L? What happens, for that matter, when Chinese is supported? Hindi? Mmmmm....remember that only a VERY few languages are supported on the Amazon platform at this time. You need embedded fonts to support many of the as-yet-unsupported languages (like Cyrillic, for example). As Amazon hasn't stopped supporting its older devices, like the K2, it can't support Cyrillic, because the older devices don't support embedded fonts. No embedded fonts= no Cyrillic. No Chinese. No Japanese. No anything that needs characters that are outside of the default font set. That's a LOT OF LANGUAGES.

Another type of product that could be consumed, and in fact - there is a tremendous hunger and need for - is what we have been discussing. Textbooks. I have students also buying/needing "other" books that fit in the trade sector.

We'll see. As I said, it's one thing for publishers to make them available, but the purchasing process, by school districts, could also interfere in this marketplace. I can certainly see it for College and University courses, and of course, any Internet learning classes. (I'm also not quite sure about where the money really goes, in the school-->Schoolbook purchasing process. I'm not casting aspersions, not at all, but there may well be parties which don't WANT eBooks of textbooks to become available for students. Dunno, don't claim to know.)

That "topped out" figure would change a lot, and fast, I think, if the books that are needed for many reasons (technical, educational, work-related, skill related) could be delivered well via e-reading devices. And, there are other, entertainment or enjoyment purposes as well.

Well...I have to say, most of the books we're building now are in that category, and I think most of the more-known firms would tell you the same thing. We haven't done mostly fiction in a few years now. Non-fiction books and DIY books, etc., are not new, in digital form.

The original Amazon Kindle build engineer (his patent was just made public - now everybody wants him) is our "CTO". He swore to me up and down this device was supposed to do everything - the hardware was built to reproduce a book that could include color photos, audio, video, you name it. But that's not the reality. The reality is I just saw discussions where the "converter" is stripping fonts out of books! I could comment about the way the e-device displays leading and handles a lot of things. Because there's been many years between Chris' original work and the original team's work and what is there today.

No--you saw a discussion that the uploader is stripping fonts. It's a converter, I suppose, for people uploading Word files, but that's a different tier of "bookmaking."

And no--the early Kindles certainly weren't designed, and didn't support, all those things. Hell, you couldn't even do a table on the first-gen Kindle, nor images in color. Or, for that matter, images that weren't the full size of the screen, not on the first-gen. Perhaps what he meant was that he was the build engineer on the first Fire device, and you thought he meant the first Kindles? You absolutely couldn't do audio/video on ANY e-ink Kindle, whether it's first, second, etc., gen. The Video would be fairly dreadful, if it played (as are most websites, on something like a K2). I suppose that audio might be possible, but the filesize would be an interesting issue.

And the NY Times just reported how Amazon treats employees (Chris was hospitalized at the end of his project after too many 'calls from Jeff'). I can't even get the dude on the phone who volunteered to help me put my short fiction on the early Kindle sales stuff - if he's survived over 10 years with them, that explains, maybe he can't even use a phone any more!

Is this the same report that is actually talking about the warehouse "employees" that aren't actually Amazon employees? You know, I've been dealing directly with folks in Seattle for 5 years now, since 2010, when we were added to their Professional Converter's list. I don't know of any who've left. Not one. They work in the "big" Tech Support (not the call center), in ECR (Executive Customer Relations), in various divisions (Kindle, KDP, Createspace, Look-Inside [Yes, Virginia, there's a Look-inside DEPARTMENT], etc.) Five years down the line, and they're still there. None have burned out, been hospitalized, etc. I chat with them on the phone, and none of them sound insane or on the edge to me. FWIW.

Be that as it may. Heck yes there is a market for good electronic versions of textbooks that can be read on devices in class with page maps etc.

And they mayn't even need page-maps. Yes, most likely, as Silverbacks don't want to change their class plans, they'll be needed, but strewth, it's not hard to look up a sentence or a phrase or a fragment, as Tex2002ans mentioned. We can always DO them, although it's a pain. Any competent bookmaker can. It's up to the publishers to decide to spend the money to make the books. I know that scads of bookmakers are out there chasing them, ALL. (I know this, again, because I get not less than 3, usually 5, emails a week from Indian and other outsourcing firms strenuously urging me to go chase Textbook work and sub-contract it to them [as if]. All the outsourced companies are convinced that this is the Next Big Thing. But the reality, for the eBook PRODUCER, is that it's just one book. The publisher and Amazon may sell 50K copies; but for the producer, it's just a single book, however complex.)

(I'm not sure what the next post you posted, the one that starts "Oh!..." is replying to, so..I'm simply replying to this one.)

Hitch

[Notjohn]

Great post, thanks. But note that R-to-L and ideograms aren't a problem: we can publish right now through the JP site and have our books appear in Japanese (aka mostly Chinese) ideograms.

So Chinese (and Cryllic and Hindi and so forth) must be doable, IF ONLY. But since our e-books aren't available on the CN store, though our print editions generally are, I suspect that it is the Chinese government that blocks them, and would presumably block Amazon. Even if it didn't, Amazon would certainly be wise to hesitate! As for Russia, they'd be mad to go in there. India and Brazil do have Kindle stores, but India of course is handicapped by its multiplicity of languages and perhaps (I don't know) scripts. There are probably more literate English speakers/readers in India than in the United States, yet the (English-language) e-book market there is tiny, to judge by my sales.

For me, UK is a distant second to the Com store, and DE and AU generally swap around for third place. My Apple and B&N e-books sales generally exceed those of all the Amazon stores outside the US. The others (Kobo etc on the one hand, the lesser Kindle stores on the other hand) don't do much at all, but they do add up over time.

My sales peaked on Amazon in January 2012 and declined steadily thereafter, which fact I attributed to the advent of Kindle Select and the influx of new publishers it attracted, and their subsequent race to the bottom in price. Sales have now stabilized and indeed have climbed a bit, perhaps to the level of 2011.

In any event, I think the January effect (all those Christmas Kindles downloading books!) is gone forever. I no longer see much of a seasonal effect, except that sales stall on three-day holidays. (Except for this one! Gosh, maybe I really have turned the corner.)

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Great post, thanks. But note that R-to-L and ideograms aren't a problem: we can publish right now through the JP site and have our books appear in Japanese (aka mostly Chinese) ideograms.

Only in KF8, Nj. Which is to say, only partly. When I say, supported, I mean, readable across the entire pantheon of Amazon devices. And it's not merely the old KF7's, K4iPad and Cloud Reader won't display embedded fonts, either, which are required for unsupported languages.

So Chinese (and Cryllic and Hindi and so forth) must be doable, IF ONLY. But since our e-books aren't available on the CN store, though our print editions generally are, I suspect that it is the Chinese government that blocks them, and would presumably block Amazon. Even if it didn't, Amazon would certainly be wise to hesitate! As for Russia, they'd be mad to go in there. India and Brazil do have Kindle stores, but India of course is handicapped by its multiplicity of languages and perhaps (I don't know) scripts. There are probably more literate English speakers/readers in India than in the United States, yet the (English-language) e-book market there is tiny, to judge by my sales.

For me, UK is a distant second to the Com store, and DE and AU generally swap around for third place. My Apple and B&N e-books sales generally exceed those of all the Amazon stores outside the US. The others (Kobo etc on the one hand, the lesser Kindle stores on the other hand) don't do much at all, but they do add up over time.

My sales peaked on Amazon in January 2012 and declined steadily thereafter, which fact I attributed to the advent of Kindle Select and the influx of new publishers it attracted, and their subsequent race to the bottom in price. Sales have now stabilized and indeed have climbed a bit, perhaps to the level of 2011.

In any event, I think the January effect (all those Christmas Kindles downloading books!) is gone forever. I no longer see much of a seasonal effect, except that sales stall on three-day holidays. (Except for this one! Gosh, maybe I really have turned the corner.)

Dunno. As I said--no fonts, no languages above and beyond what's already supported. And L-t-r is also only doable on KF8.

Hitch

[Notjohn]

>They all said they use paper textbooks for school.

To be sure, I went to university when paperbacks were 25 cents, but I would never use an e-book for close study. I am taking an EdX MOOC right now, and I bought the textbook (from Amazon, Prime delivery, tee hee) in addition to downloading the e-book from the EdX website. (The instructor gave up his royalties in order to be able to distribute the text without charge that way. 9000 people in 170 countries -- I didn't know that there were 170 countries! -- in three previous terms, so I assume that's a considerable number of books even if half drop out before the second "hour.")

My daughter, however, does use Kindle for this purpose. Paperbacks were three or four dollars by the time she went to university. I'm still skeptical. I don't really remember it unless I underline it and put exclamation marks and stars in the margin....