Take a gander at this Author's Earning Report: It's a mind-blower.
http://authorearnings.com/report/may-2015-author-earnings-report/
Big 5 Amazon bestsellers fell 26% in the last quarter. At the same time, self-published ebooks shot up to 44%. Those are insane numbers--not wholly expected by anyone! Ebooks account for 1/4 of of all the Amazon bestseller lists combined. A quarter! Major publishers have 14% of those lists.
Take a look at the graphs and line charts. They're very revealing and more than likely very accurate.
The Big ebook unit sales have plummeted another 18%. This seems to have resulted, or is a direct cause of the return to agency pricing. Sales are drastically impacted for the Big legacy publishers. Self-published authors are squeezing into and taking over that lost market share, with an increase in daily revenue of 12.4% as of Jan 2015. This whole agency ball of wax has meant decreased sales for authors, lofty prices for consumers and lower sales for publishers. This gap has been filled by self-published authors. This happened because many campaigned for publishers, so they could get their way. The Big 5, it appears, made a foolish and unexpected blunder.
Declining publishers resulted in 20 cents profit on each dollar, as opposed to 52.5 cents on ebooks. Author earings were 8-15 cents per dollar verses 17.5 cents for eboooks. At these higher ebook prices, the large and medium sized publishers are responsible for a lesser amount of books that get read and sold for the authors. The number of books on the bestseller lists spiraled downward 26%. No new fans were eager to pick up the rest of a series or even the next standalone title by the most popular bestselling authors.
It's now very evident that pricing control is astoundingly powerful The A-List publishers and the biggest retailers are in a squabble and fight for this power. Authors who like to have complete control over their pricing, avoiding the entanglements of the huge publishers and retailers, are given a very clear message:
SELF-PUBLISHERS WILL CONTINUE TO TAKE MARKET SHARE FROM THOSE FRUSTRATED READERS. They'll do this every quarter, with basically no constraints or competition. Self-published authors will have, and do have complete control over their careers.
Summation: Greed is doing in the Big Five and all those big independents who followed in raising their prices to fit their bloated needs. The average Big Five ebook is around $10, while the self-published authors have titles ranging from $3 to $3.50. Quality, bestsellers, coupled with high prices does not guarantee increased sales. Could it be that the huge publishers feel vastly superior over all other publishers and publishing methods? Kind of looks that way, doesn't it?
I've only self-published one title myself. With this kind of Author Earnings Report news, I'm going to self-publish all my out-of-print back-list titles for a start. I also have some new stuff that deserves to hit Amazon, and I found a trustworthy publishing service that can handle any phase of the task. Their team resumes are more than impressive.
I'm a complete dolt when it comes to editing, proofreading, formatting and creating cover art. You might check them out and see what I mean. Any author thinking of self-publishing at this time or in the future would be wise to read their website and then shoot them an email.
New Standard Publishing Group:
http://www.nspubgroup.com/
Take care. And take all the money you deserve for your hard work.
Chris
Congratulations! You've been nominated for a Liebster Award! See this post for the rules: http://psilovethatbook.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/liebster-award.html
ReplyDeleteI don't get it. Am I in line to win something blog-related, or is this just another membership enticement? I swear, I can't trust anybody anymore. There's always some type of gimmick.
ReplyDeleteChris, I don't know that "greed" is killing the Big Five. They've got bigger bills to pay than the average self-published author and someone, somewhere, has to cover the overhead. How could they do that if they started pricing novels at 99-cents or free -- as many s-p'ed writers now do?
ReplyDeleteAnd how would we compete with them if they did?
Thank you for commenting. I love to read other's thoughts on these types of issues.
ReplyDeleteYou make a valid point. But I think some or many of their astronomical advances are entirely misplaced. Hillary Clinton's 14.5 million advance for one example. Hillary's book lost 50% of its earning in the third week. Her daughter's (Chelsea) middle grade book, where she writes about paucity and climate change, neither of which she is qualified to write about. Her resume is that she is the daughter of the famous Clintons. I wonder what the advance was for that. A celebrity author? You betcha.
John Scalzi's thirteen books - 10 adult and three YA titles - to be published over the next 10 years, for 3.4 million dollars.
“Barbra Streisand's memoir, called ‘honest, enlightening, and revealing’, that will ‘share memories of her childhood; explore her extraordinarily successful career on stage, screen, and in the recording studio. This book isn't even titled yet, but I'm agog as to what she she might have gotten up front for it.
Overhead? Those publishers have plenty of black line money. They can afford to at least set some of their prices competitively. Yet, I continuously see high-priced e-books. My paperback costs less than one of the Big Five's ebooks.
the cost of ebooks is absolutely ridiculous. my favorite series - the books range right at $10 each.
DeleteI think that is very high, Mari. Mass market paperbacks are running about what? Seven to eight dollars.
ReplyDeleteit is very high. i've seen some ebooks from the major publishers going for anywhere from $10 to $20. no joke. it's ridiculous.
DeleteOMG. And they say that the production of e-books is equal to or exceeds the time, effort and money to produce them. I'm not buying.
ReplyDeleteMy, Lord--$20!!!
producing an ebook doesn't take near the time or effort as producing a print book - which if you've done any indie electronic publishing, you kno. but yeah - $20 --- i won't even pay that for a physical book.
DeleteYes, $20 is a very expensive quality trade paperback--or a reasonable/cheap price for a wrap-around hardback. Publishers who wish to command these prices for ebooks are going to drive themselves right out of business.
ReplyDeleteOne would think they'd drive themselves out of business. I know people who are ignorant enough to pay that $20 for an ebook --- it boggles the mind!!
DeleteI'll lay odds that those gullible readers are hooked on a series crafted by their favorite best-selling name brand author. Every time I read Publishers Weeky, I see NOTHING but announcements of three-book deals. Always three-book deals. Always. Except for the best-selling authors who are pounding out books five, six seven and eight, etc,. Know what I did at the behest of my agent? I just finished a trilogy series tonight--yep, a three-book series. And I've never done that in 27 years of writing. But I went the smart way--each book is a standalone, with slight ties back to the others. Now, we'll what really happens. With my luck, Penguin/Random will pick me up and put a $15 tag on all my books. IDIOTS.
ReplyDelete