Author Earnings looks beyond Kindle

[fjtorres]

http://authorearnings.com/report/oct...-ebook-market/

• Amazon makes up a higher percentage of the total US ebook market than the oft-cited 65% figure: when indie books without ISBNs are included in the statistics, Amazon accounts for 74% of all US ebook purchases and 71% of all US consumer dollars spent on ebooks.
• Outside of Amazon.com, 4 other major online retailers comprise nearly the entirety of the remaing 26% of the US ebook market: the Apple iBookstore, the Barnes & Noble Nook store, the Kobo US bookstore, and GooglePlay Books.
• At those 4 other stores, self-published indie ebooks make up 22% of all ebooks purchases and take in 32% of all author income generated by ebook sales.
• Between 14% and 25% of all ebooks sold at Apple, Nook, and Kobo store lack Bowker-issued International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs).
• In total, more than 33% of all ebooks sold in the US each year have no ISBN.
• Across the entire US ebook market, ebooks without ISBNs now command a greater share of consumer ebook purchases, reading time, and author earnings than all of the AAP’s 1,200 publishers put together, including the Big Five.
• The true US ebook market, which includes non-ISBN sales, is at least 50% larger than ISBN-limited market statistics from Nielsen and Bowker are estimating.

According to most industry accounts, 65% of all US ebook sales happen through Amazon’s Kindle store. Or, more accurately, 65% of traditionally-published ebook sales do — because as we’ve seen, the media reporting on the industry almost always confuses the sales of only 1,200 traditional AAP publishers with those of the entire US ebook market. And as we’ve also seen, those 1,200 AAP publishers now represent less than half of the broader US ebook market — a market which, despite all the misleading media coverage of the AAP’s collapsing ebook sales, is still growing while the AAP’s minority share of it falls.

In the US, more than 95% of all consumer ebook purchases — and probably closer to 99% of them — go through just five major ebook retailers. Among those five, Amazon is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla. Amazon accounts for almost two thirds of the traditionally-published total… and significantly more of the true overall ebook total, making up 74% of US ebook unit sales and 71% of US gross consumer dollars spent on ebooks (once you include all no-ISBN indie sales and those of Amazon’s publishing imprints.)

Next up in size after Amazon is Apple’s iBooks store, accounting for roughly 10-12% of US ebook sales — or a third of what’s left. After iBooks comes Barnes & Noble’s Nook store, which despite its steepening downward slide over the past two years, still remains the #3 ebook retailer with about 7-8% of all US ebook sales. Fourth up is Kobo, with about half of Nook’s sales — or maybe 3-4% of the total US market. And finally Google, with around a third of Kobo’s sales, making up 1-2% of today’s ebook market — a surprisingly meager showing for the internet giant.

As usual, much more (and pretty pictures!) at the source.

[Cinisajoy]

Great data.
Oh and Google doesn't surprise me being so low. It is almost impossible to find any books on their site.

[Barcey]

I wonder how long it will take until the board of directors at one the big 5 wakes up and realizes they're being told a stack of lies. eBook revenues at the big 5 are stagnant or shrinking in a very profitable and growing ebook market.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Barcey

I wonder how long it will take until the board of directors at one the big 5 wakes up and realizes they're being told a stack of lies. eBook revenues at the big 5 are stagnant or shrinking in a very profitable and growing ebook market.

Dante will be able to ice skate before that happens. Or that is my best guess.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Dante will be able to ice skate before that happens. Or that is my best guess.

Sorry to possibly side track the thread, but what is the Dante reference?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by John F

Sorry to possibly side track the thread, but what is the Dante reference?

Dante. Inferno. Frozen nether regions.

As is, Dante has been sking the past week; in a recent column Shatzkin was "quoting" Author Earnings numbers to make his point. And not disparagingly.
(We've come that far in 18 months.)

Some airports are issuing flying pig alerts, too.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by John F

Sorry to possibly side track the thread, but what is the Dante reference?

One suspect's a reference to Dante's Inferno as a location.

To confirm the basic premise of this thread, a favourite author (Nathan Lowell) has just released his latest book, and chose to release it to Amazon Select because, as he says on his blog:

The new book is out! Yay!
It’s only on Amazon! BOO!
Yeah. Unfortunately, I’ve had to take a hard look at my business and I just can’t afford not to be in Amazon Select any more. I totaled up the sales on all the other platforms combined and it amounted to just under 6%. Even paperbacks have generated more revenue than that. I started re-evaluating the market and came to the realization that I just don’t know what’s going on. I need more data.

Previous books had been released on Apple, Nook, & Kobo, for all the good it did him.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Some airports are issuing flying pig alerts, too.

It is about time someone painted an airplane to look like a flying pig. I would want to fly it even if I didn't have to go anywhere.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by CRussel

One suspect's a reference to Dante's Inferno as a location.

To confirm the basic premise of this thread, a favourite author (Nathan Lowell) has just released his latest book, and chose to release it to Amazon Select because, as he says on his blog:


Previous books had been released on Apple, Nook, & Kobo, for all the good it did him.

That trend is starting to spread beyond Indie Authors to small publishers:
http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/1...e-exclusivity/

The non-Kindle stores need to step up their game:

Anybody notice that Data Guy had to modify the spider to adapt to non-responsive web pages at Nook?
Or that Google games their top 100 "seller" list? B&N used to do that to hide indie romance titles.
And Kobo? When they sold out to Rakuten they were bragging of "high single digit" US market share so they seem to have lost half their share since then.

Hard to fault small/indie publishers for going KDP Select and KU.

[Cinisajoy]

Yes was referencing Dante's Inferno.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Yes was referencing Dante's Inferno.

I just thought the reference was a little strange. Dante was the author of the Inferno, but he wasn't the character; I don't know much about Dante, so I didn't assume he was going to hell. He died a while ago, so he probably already passed through purgatorio, and if skating was his hobby, he may very well already be skating in Paradisio. I guess I'm over thinking it.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by John F

I just thought the reference was a little strange. Dante was the author of the Inferno, but he wasn't the character; I don't know much about Dante, so I didn't assume he was going to hell. He died a while ago, so he probably already passed through purgatorio, and if skating was his hobby, he may very well already be skating in Paradisio. I guess I'm over thinking it.

You are definitely over thinking it.
I was referring to the inferno freezing over.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

You are definitely over thinking it.
I was referring to the inferno freezing over.

It was a long time ago that I read Dante's Inferno, but I'm sure I remember that parts of Hell _were_ frozen over. I vaguely recall Satan himself living in a frozen region.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by rkomar

It was a long time ago that I read Dante's Inferno, but I'm sure I remember that parts of Hell _were_ frozen over. I vaguely recall Satan himself living in a frozen region.

That is correct, I just looked it up. The deeper levels are frozen.

This idiom seems to originate in early 20th century, and presumably reflects a popularized 'folk' version of hell, which involves eternal fire and such. So it becomes a metaphor for 'it will never happen'.

[conan50]

If publishers and these other ebook stores do not get their heads out of the sand, Amazon will own ebooks--it almost does now--and "Kindle" will be as synonymous with "Ebook" as "Xerox" is to a paper copy of something. I think it may already be too late for them, and higher ebook prices from the big publishers was the final nail in their own coffin.