Amazon is destroying e-reader innovation

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by Rizla

As it stands, even with their comparatively small e-book sales, the European markets display greater choice of device than the US market. That's counter-intuitive.

I'd say it's the opposite of counter-intuitive.

Obviously, as pointed out before, there is no common "European market" for ebooks. There is no shop that sells ebooks in all European languages; Amazon and Kobo, the only international giants that even sell books to all of Europe at all only have books in a handful of European languages.

This means every smaller European market is left on its own, and many of the markets are so small that there is absolutely no incentive or financial reason for booksellers to develop their own "walled gardens" or proprietary ebook readers. Amazon and B&N have good economic reason for this in their primary markets - it's worth it, to them, and people have gravitated towards these large booksellers and their perfectly fine (if perhaps a bit dull but excellent quality) readers.

Here, for example, the book market is small. Paper book market is small. Last year's top ten bestsellers sold between 8300 and 6500 copies each altogether (8300 to 2400 copies each for the fiction top ten); last year's top ten ebook bestsellers (all fiction) sold between 1890 and 154 copies each. That's the entire market, covering all bookshops and booksellers.

This means there's zero reason for booksellers to come out with their own ereaders - and with watermarked epub having been adopted as the country-wide standard, that means no restrictions on devices that can be sold and bought. Basically anything out there will do, including Kindles, since watermarked epub is freely convertible (and indeed, bookshops provide links to Calibre together with basic instructions on how to convert from epub to mobi/azw3).

This means that Kindles can co-exist with Kobo, Sony, Onyx, Pocketbook, Prestigio and whatever else bookshops think they can sell (and online sellers / e-shops which don't need to keep physical stock of everything but import less frequently bought things upon ordering can offer even greater choice). There's no reason for them to prefer and advertise one product over another - it's more sensible to offer a selection, to make people feel they are offered a choice, to get them to buy an e-reader (and one from their shop) in the first place.

If the market was (much) bigger, then I imagine they'd find more incentive to come out with a branded reader and offer only that - but even so, with watermarked epub now being the country-wide standard, they'd have to be extremely confident (or achieve a monopoly) in order to go for a proprietary format and one single brand of device.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

If the market was (much) bigger, then I imagine they'd find more incentive to come out with a branded reader and offer only that - but even so, with watermarked epub now being the country-wide standard, they'd have to be extremely confident (or achieve a monopoly) in order to go for a proprietary format and one single brand of device.

Exactly.
High volume sellers get econony of scale advantages that squeeze out small players, and not just in pricing. Visibility and mindshare matter. That's Kobo's problem in the US: lack of mainstream visibility. In a market without a clear leader, all brands have equal visibility and credibility.

Speaking of mindshare: any activity on the indie publishing front in Estonia? One advantage of indie ebooks is the higher author margins that allow them to make a living off lower prices and low volumes. An author that can get 2-3 books out per year can make a living off sales in the hundreds after 2-3 years. Long tail economics favor low volumes...

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Speaking of mindshare: any activity on the indie publishing front in Estonia? One advantage of indie ebooks is the higher author margins that allow them to make a living off lower prices and low volumes.

I honestly don't know. There are some, I believe, who do basically indie print books, but .. ebooks, no. Something like 80% of ebooks that sell in any reasonable quantity at all ("reasonable quantity" meaning "50 copies a year or more") are translations of foreign fiction; I'm not sure that local fiction would really sell well as its primary target group - probably more slanted towards older and countryside people - hasn't really embraced e-reading as far as I can tell, probably not the least because they're basically 100% library users.

Eventually, it might start making sense. As it is, if you can hope to sell a maximum of 100 copies a year as an unknown without physical bookshop and library presence, you're not going to make a living of it even if you managed to write 2-3 books a year.

I only found data on the books published by publishing houses (members of the publishers' association), so I can't say for certain that this applies, of course. But I haven't spotted any obviously self-published titles whenever I'm browsing our bookshops' new ebooks lists to see if there's anything there my mother would like to read.

[Rizla]

Let me get this straight. The larger the market, the less diversity one will see?

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

An author that can get 2-3 books out per year can make a living off sales in the hundreds after 2-3 years.

The trouble is, those books will be rushed and of poor quality.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

I only found data on the books published by publishing houses (members of the publishers' association), so I can't say for certain that this applies, of course. But I haven't spotted any obviously self-published titles whenever I'm browsing our bookshops' new ebooks lists to see if there's anything there my mother would like to read.

Hopefully things will improve as ebook penetration improves.

In the US, before the conspiracy turbo-boosted indie ebooks--before even kindle--sites like Fictionwise accepted and promoted indie titles as a way to boost their catalog and compete against the name brand bookstores.
It was the opposite of what we see now: the big ebookstores have deep indie sections and the independents have none or, at most, Smashwords only. That is one area where ebookstore and traditional publisher interests most strongly diverge. If your ebookstores are still in the thrall of the traditional gatekeepers any indie push will likely be aimed at external sales. (I vaguely remember seeing a comment somewhere from an estonian indie author who was doing good business in english on Amazon.)

Time will tell...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Rizla

The trouble is, those books will be rushed and of poor quality.

It's your privilege to believe that.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Rizla

The trouble is, those books will be rushed and of poor quality.

Not really; 1000 words a day, Monday to Friday with two weeks off a year gets you 250,000 words. The average writer can knock that off in 2-3 hours or less, giving you 3 novels of 80,000 words in a year.

Now the quality may vary depending on the writer, but that's a pretty leisurely production rate for someone doing nothing but writing fiction.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by Rizla

The trouble is, those books will be rushed and of poor quality.

For some, probably. On the other hand, there are plenty of published authors who put out 2-3 books a year (sometimes in different genres or under different pseudonyms) and not all of them suck.

Depends entirely on the author (and their team, if applicable); some are fast and good writers, other take a decade to write a book and it's still of poor quality.

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Hopefully things will improve as ebook penetration improves. /---/ If your ebookstores are still in the thrall of the traditional gatekeepers any indie push will likely be aimed at external sales. (I vaguely remember seeing a comment somewhere from an estonian indie author who was doing good business in english on Amazon.)

I hope things will change, yes - although at least for those authors who write in Estonian, going through a publisher is probably still a better option at the moment. I've got the impression that if your manuscript is any good at all (and has any hope to sell at all), it'll be picked up by a publisher - not many of them want to focus entirely on translations.

If you have that option at all (depending on both your genre and on whether you can write well enough in English and have access to native speakers for beta readers and editors), targeting readers in English is obviously a better bet - not necessarily easier to break through, but market sizes are so different that it might be worth it (and very much worth it).

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Not really; 1000 words a day, Monday to Friday with two weeks off a year gets you 250,000 words. The average writer can knock that off in 2-3 hours or less, giving you 3 novels of 80,000 words in a year.

Now the quality may vary depending on the writer, but that's a pretty leisurely production rate for someone doing nothing but writing fiction.

Truly prolific writers can do a book a month. Or quicker.

Most full-time professionals can easily do 4-6. The main limitation has generally been publishers' schedules and policies, which is why many tradpub authors work with more than one publisher and/or indiepub on the side.

So far, it looks like a lot of indie authors start quitting their day job when they get their backlist to 10 books or so: at that point 5 copies per book per day gets them to $30k or so a year. Many get there with less titles. Many never get there. It really depends on talent, but 1800 copies is a lot lower bar than the 3000 copies needed to earn out a typical $4k advance. A writer good enough to sell 3000 copies per book can go full-time with as few as four titles in their catalog.

It's a cottage industry, quietly making decent money under the radar.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Truly prolific writers can do a book a month. Or quicker.

Most full-time professionals can easily do 4-6. The main limitation has generally been publishers' schedules and policies, which is why many tradpub authors work with more than one publisher and/or indiepub on the side.

So far, it looks like a lot of indie authors start quitting their day job when they get their backlist to 10 books or so: at that point 5 copies per book per day gets them to $30k or so a year. Many get there with less titles. Many never get there. It really depends on talent, but 1800 copies is a lot lower bar than the 3000 copies needed to earn out a typical $4k advance. A writer good enough to sell 3000 copies per book can go full-time with as few as four titles in their catalog.

It's a cottage industry, quietly making decent money under the radar.

Oh, I agree completely. I wasn't trying to set limits, only to show just how 2 or 3 books a year is completely reasonable without any need to rush.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Oh, I agree completely. I wasn't trying to set limits, only to show just how 2 or 3 books a year is completely reasonable without any need to rush.

Just expanding.
I should've just said that 2-3 books is the typical output of an author that hasn't quit the day job.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

An author that can get 2-3 books out per year can make a living off sales in the hundreds after 2-3 years.

Originally Posted by Rizla

The trouble is, those books will be rushed and of poor quality.

Then the author won't be able to make a living off of the sale of those.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Just expanding.
I should've just said that 2-3 books is the typical output of an author that hasn't quit the day job.

That just is not true.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by tompe

That just is not true.

I would bet that if you really did the research, you would find that there are more (BPH) published authors who write multiple books per year than not. The big publishers, for the most part, do not ALLOW their authors to publish more than one book per year through them. This is why some authors use multiple publishers. (as long as they haven't signed that right away in their initial contract, that is...)

Shari