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Another hatchet job on ebook sales numbers

3K views 20 replies 12 participants last post by  an758GnQExU249 
#1 ·
I looked back a little ways and didn't see this article referenced in any thread, so I thought I'd bring it up.

https://www.itproportal.com/features/can-big-data-analytics-save-the-ebook-market-or-is-the-kindle-dwindle-impossible-to-prevent/

This appears to be another one of those stories that comes out, detailing how the sales of ebooks are falling and it spells doom for the ebook publisher. But, just like every other story like this, they only use the numbers supplied by the trad publishers, with not one mention about the indie authors. Of course ebook sales numbers will drop when the ebook is about the same price or even higher than the paperback put out by a trad publisher.

One of these days I'd love to see Amazon put out the numbers of indie published ebooks that have sold through their store. I'd love to see them say, "Oh, the traditional publishers sold 162 million ebooks last year? That's so cute. We sold over 500 million, with about 75% of them coming from indie authors outside the traditional publishing track."

Of course, the trad publishers are probably terrified that Amazon might just do that one day.
 
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#2 ·
> We sold over 500 million,

It wouldn't look so good if they also gave the number of publishers!

"We sold over 500 million books by 100 million self-pubbers....'
 
#3 ·
According to DataGuy, at the Nebula's, Trad ebook numbers are now less than half the total market, and falling rapidly, while the market itself is exploding.

The Data is out there. And its saying the exact opposite to what Trad publishers say.
 
#6 ·
notjohn said:
> We sold over 500 million,

It wouldn't look so good if they also gave the number of publishers!

"We sold over 500 million books by 100 million self-pubbers....'
Oh, I am not sure it is all that gloomy. Per Amazon, over 1,000 authors made over $100,000 in 2017 on KDP alone. That is 100 million right there, but it is probably more like several hundred million bucks when you add in the outliers who made north of 500k or over 1 million each. (Author Earnings 2016 put the 100k+-on-Amazon number alone at about 1350.) Considering how many high earning authors are wide and/or also published via APub, how many have audio and-or foreign deals, AND all the APub authored books (with a much high average earnings than the average indie) are out there, I think the full ebook picture could look pretty impressive.

And a whole lot more people are in the 50k club. 2500 authors made 50k or more on Amazon alone in 2016 per Author Earnings. At any rate, the averages beat tradpub all to heck! Here is the report if people want to be more cheered up. The graphs are pretty illuminating.
http://authorearnings.com/report/may-2016-report/

Not everybody will make a living writing fiction, but it sure is more likely than at any other time in history. So yay.
 
#8 ·
Not getting into the trad/indie divide...

I'm confused why the report is using unit sales and neglects to mention revenue. Most publishers live and die by revenue, not units. So, is trad ebook revenue up or down? Trad print unit numbers are up a little, but is revenue up a little or a lot? What does the aggregated total revenue of ebook and print look like today compared to a year ago? What do profits look like? Is the trad strategy to window and dampen ebook sales working as they hoped it would? Because...strategy.

Data in a vacuum is pretty meaningless.

The point of the article seems to be pushing trad pubs more digitally so the pubs can collect big data, likely using services the IT authors either sell or receive kickbacks for. Which, to my cynic's eye, is likely why indies aren't mentioned. It's an advertorial, not a news piece. And we are not the target audience.
 
#9 ·
PhoenixS said:
Not getting into the trad/indie divide...

I'm confused why the report is using unit sales and neglects to mention revenue. Most publishers live and die by revenue, not units. So, is trad ebook revenue up or down? Trad print unit numbers are up a little, but is revenue up a little or a lot? What does the aggregated total revenue of ebook and print look like today compared to a year ago? What do profits look like? Is the trad strategy to window and dampen ebook sales working as they hoped it would? Because...strategy.

Data in a vacuum is pretty meaningless.

The point of the article seems to be pushing trad pubs more digitally so the pubs can collect big data, likely using services the IT authors either sell or receive kickbacks for. Which, to my cynic's eye, is likely why indies aren't mentioned. It's an advertorial, not a news piece. And we are not the target audience.
Yes. I'm always puzzled when people don't talk about revenue, especially "revenue to the author." That's the number I care about.
 
#10 ·
JRTomlin said:
Nor would the traditional publishing if they also gave the number of novels submitted that never even make it to publishing. Maybe comparing like to like would be more elucidating.
It's true that we often compare apples and oranges. Trad publishing stats should include all of the people who submitted but never got a thing published. These days, we should probably also include people who were rejected at the agent level repeatedly and never even got to submit. All those zeroes averaged in would create a very different picture.

Trad publishing works really well for a very small number of people. So does self publishing. Then there is a larger group that does OK, a still larger group that makes something, but not enough to live on, and an enormous group that makes little or nothing. This group is hidden in the trad publishing world, whereas it's quite visible in self-publishing. I doubt the trads even keep stats on how people they reject.
 
#11 ·
Little Dorrit said:
I know the trad numbers fell quite a bit when they jacked up prices, but are they still falling?
What I remember of the graphs, yes. The fall seems to be a consistent down angle. And that is what all these stats get based on.

But the thing which blew my mind away, was adding in the indie figures. Without them, more than half the graph is missing. And the true situation is hidden.

Sales and revenue are booming. But the trad line is going down, proportionally to the line going up.

Trad pricing could be an issue, but like someone said, the huge number of books submitted but never published by trads is the rest of the story.A high proportion of those go Indie, and a proportion of those outsell what they would have as a trad. KU has its part in that as well.
 
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#12 ·
Bill Hiatt said:
It's true that we often compare apples and oranges. Trad publishing stats should include all of the people who submitted but never got a thing published.
Why? Shall we include in the indie numbers all the people who say they are gonna self-publish "when they have time" but never do?

As Phoenix said, the "article" is an infomercial, not actual news. The publishing industry (trade and indie) is doing just fine. Revenues have increased over the last two years. While traditional revenue streams (brick and mortar chain stores) have dropped, revenues have picked up through non-traditional channels (drug stores, subscription services, etc). And, yes, it is all about REVENUE, not sales units. Yes, trade ebook sales are down, but print...particularly, believe it or not, hardcover, has made a big comeback. When publishers look at a title, they are looking at overall revenue, not just individual ebook units.

And while price of ebooks is a factor, it is only a factor in relation to genre. The ebook market is dominated by the romance genre (depending on who is doing the reporting, it is anywhere from 40-60% of the ebook market). And that is a voracious readership that can eat through multiple books a WEEK. So it makes sense that they are more price conscious than other readers. A person who eats out for lunch every day is going to be more price conscious about the cost of lunch than a person who only eats out for lunch once a week.

There is a lot more nuance in the marketplace.
 
#13 ·
Bards and Sages (Julie) said:
Why? Shall we include in the indie numbers all the people who say they are gonna self-publish "when they have time" but never do?

As Phoenix said, the "article" is an infomercial, not actual news. The publishing industry (trade and indie) is doing just fine. Revenues have increased over the last two years. While traditional revenue streams (brick and mortar chain stores) have dropped, revenues have picked up through non-traditional channels (drug stores, subscription services, etc). And, yes, it is all about REVENUE, not sales units. Yes, trade ebook sales are down, but print...particularly, believe it or not, hardcover, has made a big comeback. When publishers look at a title, they are looking at overall revenue, not just individual ebook units.

And while price of ebooks is a factor, it is only a factor in relation to genre. The ebook market is dominated by the romance genre (depending on who is doing the reporting, it is anywhere from 40-60% of the ebook market). And that is a voracious readership that can eat through multiple books a WEEK. So it makes sense that they are more price conscious than other readers. A person who eats out for lunch every day is going to be more price conscious about the cost of lunch than a person who only eats out for lunch once a week.

There is a lot more nuance in the marketplace.
Logically, someone who is going to self-publish but never does is equivalent to someone who is going to submit to a publisher or try to find an agent but never makes the effort. The closest equivalent in trad publishing to an indie who sells only a few copies would be someone who tries for a long time to get trad published but doesn't make it.

My only point was that attempts to compare indies to trad published authors omits an important part of the comparison--which, as JRTomlin points out, is probably unavoidable since the stats for rejections aren't kept.

I agree with everything else you said. I think you may have assumed my point was different from what it actually was.
 
#14 ·
I want to believe the decline in sales can be traced to the fact there are simply too many choices out there...Some good, some not-so-good. This digital tsunami has been described as trying to take a sip from a fire hose.
 
#15 ·
"aggregates sales data from over 450 publishers" - and that is where their data goes wrong. They can not claim to analyze ebook sales, and only look at publisher sales. Unless they gather ebook sales numbers from outlets (Amazon, iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc) they are only analyzing ebook sales of 450 publishers.
 
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#16 ·
Mike Coville said:
"aggregates sales data from over 450 publishers" - and that is where their data goes wrong.
The data is perfectly fine. There is nothing wrong with the data. The data is compiled for use by businesses who do business in a VERY different way than indies. In fact, including INDIE data in a report like this would be counter-productive, much like including trade publisher data in a report designed for use by indies would be counter-productive.

This isn't an "us-versus-them GO INDIE" discussion. At least, in 2018, it really shouldn't be. Indies as a community need to stop dismissing reports they don't like simply because it doesn't apply to them. The trade publishing industry and the indie industry are two different and distinct animals that serve different needs. When research companies compile data on corporate businesses, you don't dismiss the data because it doesn't include the tens of thousands of one-person sole proprietors working out of their basements or garages. You look at it based on data compiled FOR a sector of the industry to reflect that sector of the industry.

Again, the link in the original post goes to an infomercial, not an objective piece. But the fact that the source material noted refers to trade publishers doesn't automatically make it WRONG. It simply means it does not apply to your business.
 
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#18 ·
jb1111 said:
So, even though the trad guys have all the money and capital to promote and gain visibility, and they have a lot of big name authors -- their eBook sales are still falling?
Gross ebook sales volume is down, but overall gross revenues are up. It isn't disturbing. It is by design. We all know trade publishing has traditionally worked very hard to maintain the price points of their ebooks (this is the original reason for agency pricing in the first place..to prevent Amazon from bargain-basement pricing ebooks like they did print). Trade publishing has streamlined a great deal to improve profitability on lower volume. This has also been the general trend in consumer commodities in general due to market fragmentation.
 
#19 ·
Bards and Sages (Julie) said:
The data is perfectly fine. There is nothing wrong with the data. The data is compiled for use by businesses who do business in a VERY different way than indies. In fact, including INDIE data in a report like this would be counter-productive, much like including trade publisher data in a report designed for use by indies would be counter-productive.

This isn't an "us-versus-them GO INDIE" discussion. At least, in 2018, it really shouldn't be. Indies as a community need to stop dismissing reports they don't like simply because it doesn't apply to them. The trade publishing industry and the indie industry are two different and distinct animals that serve different needs. When research companies compile data on corporate businesses, you don't dismiss the data because it doesn't include the tens of thousands of one-person sole proprietors working out of their basements or garages. You look at it based on data compiled FOR a sector of the industry to reflect that sector of the industry.

Again, the link in the original post goes to an infomercial, not an objective piece. But the fact that the source material noted refers to trade publishers doesn't automatically make it WRONG. It simply means it does not apply to your business.
In what way shouldn't an article or a study on the EBOOK MARKET include the whole market? When you talk about "retail sales in the US" or the "market for bicycles," you include the whole market--the boutique mountain bike manufacturers as well as Huffy et al. It's all one market with different segments. In the case of publishing, it's not nearly as different as the bicycle market--you're talking about number of ebooks sold, and ebook readers don't read JUST trad or JUST indie, especially in big genres like mystery and romance.

Anybody who's published both trad and indie ebooks knows that it's the same market. The same buyer will pick up an author's indie books and her trad ebooks. They're all on the same virtual shelf together, not by publisher. (How they ARE divided is by genre.) There is no distinction made by any of the distributors that "this is an indie book," or "this is an Amazon Publishing book." That market, even within the same genre, will be segmented--readers who are reading only free books, for example, will probably not read tradpub books at all. Those readers exist, but they're just one segment of the same market.

The article is talking about one piece of the market but purporting to be talking about all of it. If it had been presented as an analysis of the state of the tradpubbed ebook market, it would have been a whole lot less misleading.
 
#20 ·
Usedtoposthere said:
The article is talking about one piece of the market but purporting to be talking about all of it. If it had been presented as an analysis of the state of the tradpubbed ebook market, it would have been a whole lot less misleading.
This.
 
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#21 ·
Usedtoposthere said:
The article is talking about one piece of the market but purporting to be talking about all of it. If it had been presented as an analysis of the state of the tradpubbed ebook market, it would have been a whole lot less misleading.
And as I have said MULTIPLE TIMES already, the ARTICLE in question is an infomercial designed to "sell" business analytics. The article writer was not responsible for compiling the data. They are using the data for their own agenda. This is why I said THE DATA is fine. The way the site is using it is problematic.

There is nothing wrong with the data. The issue is that the data is being presented in a way designed to encourage a specific sector of the industry to buy into a specific set of services.
 
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