[Hasbeen]

Executive Summary

AuthorEarnings reports analyze detailed title-level data on 33% of all daily ebook sales in the U.S.
30% of the ebooks being purchased in the U.S. do not use ISBN numbers and are invisible to the industry's official market surveys and reports; all the ISBN-based estimates of market share reported by Bowker, AAP, BISG, and Nielsen are wildly wrong.
33% of all paid ebook unit sales on Amazon.com are indie self-published ebooks.
20% of all consumer dollars spent on ebooks on Amazon.com are being spent on indie self-published ebooks.
40% of all dollars earned by authors from ebooks on Amazon.com are earned by indie self-published ebooks.
In mid-year 2014, indie-published authors as a cohort began taking home the lion's share (40%) of all ebook author earnings generated on Amazon.com while authors published by all of the Big Five publishers combined slipped into second place at 35%.

I thought this article was very information for us indie authors. Author Earnings attempts of dissect the market with some degree of sophistication so I tend to take it seriously. It would appear us indie types are gaining ground not losing it in the overall market place. So I read it as good news. Any comments? If you want to read the whole article here is the web sight. (http://authorearnings.com)

 

[Sheluvspink]

My question is do you need to have an ISBN number to hit a best seller list? How are those tracked?

 

[dianapersaud]

I signed up for the newsletter so I read it a few weeks ago. Actually, I read the stuff about ISBN just when I was contemplating buying my own. Thanks to this report, I saved $275.

Also, Indies make up a larger share because small publishers (which can be only one Indie author) are not counted in the "Indie" category.

I felt the article was very good news for self publishers. It was eye opening and I agree that the Big Five are feeling threatened and they have no idea what to do. Sticking their head in the ground and ignoring Indies won't help them in the long run.

 

[dianapersaud]

My question is do you need to have an ISBN number to hit a best seller list? How are those tracked?

I believe certain bookstores (scattered throughout the US) are used to gauge best seller status. You need an ISBN for physical books in bookstores. I don't think e-books can make the lists unless they break out on Amazon.

There are scams where you can pay a company to buy your books (they have people purchasing it throughout the US) so that you can make the bestseller lists. It can be rigged, if you are willing to pay.

 

[75845]

Executive Summary

AuthorEarnings reports analyze detailed title-level data on 33% of all daily ebook sales in the U.S.
30% of the ebooks being purchased in the U.S. do not use ISBN numbers and are invisible to the industry's official market surveys and reports;

It's 33% on Amazon.com, not all eBook sales in US. Read ISBN threads on kboards and you will read of people who like me use ISBN for epub but not mobi. It is 33% by number but not a decent statistical example, because it is not randomised. It selects from the top 100 in each category and sub-category, which I suspect means over-reporting Amazon Publishing and indies and under-reporting Big 5. It is a gargantuan effort that Data Guy has done to extract that data, but he is no statistician. He went onto a futurebook Twitter debate a week later and proclaimed that no indie uses ISBNs, which a brief search of kboards will tell you is incorrect. He was challenged on Twitter by Joanna Penn on this interpretation. He backtracked slightly by acknowledging that he uses the vendor provided ISBNs, but "until other people do" the industry stats are misleading. They are misleading, but so is the Author Earnings statistics, which for all the complaints in the introduction to the current report that no-one in the industry takes them seriously, are statistics aimed to prove what indies want to hear, or at least what those indies without research or statistics backgrounds want to hear. Courtney Milan, who has a statistics background, offered to fund proper statistical analysis after the first report, but a year later there is still no statistician on-board the Author Earnings team and it shows. They need a statistician to help them choose how to extract the data in a way that would appear neutral and then to give more balanced conclusions from the data than Hugh Howey and Data Guy are giving. But if you don't want industry figures and independent pundits to pay attention I'm sure Author Earnings is doing a great job.