Below is an analysis of BKS's share
of ebook unit sales (February 2017 Big, Bad, Wide & International Report: covering Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), BKS, and Kobo ebook sales in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).
According to the Author Earnings report, the share of
Kindle ebook unit sales represented by AAP members has dropped from 45 % to 32 %.
The scheme protected Apple from price competition from other retailers and increased Apple's revenue per
eBook unit sold compared to the wholesale model.
In his recent New Insights
on eBook Unit Sales from Nielsen, Michael Cader at Publishers Lunch had a couple of explanatory paragraphs about how the traditional publishing market action is reported.
Literary Fiction, which is not a lucrative category overall in publishing, makes up only 2 % of
Amazon ebook unit sales and 3 % of Amazon ebook dollar sales.
In another year Author Earnings will show indies take up close to 40 % of Amazon's
daily ebook unit sales and close to 30 % of the $ sales.
Traditional publishers sold 10 %
fewer ebook units in 2017 compared with the previous year, according to data released by PubTrack Digital.
The price of an eBook in many cases now approaches — or even exceeds — the price of the same book in paper even though there are almost no incremental costs to produce each
additional eBook unit.
PubTrack
collects ebook unit - sales data from «a panel of over thirty US publishers,» according to Nielsen, who then sells that data back to the publishing industry at large.
The Retail Gorilla — According to AuthorEarnings.Com — the overall market share of
US ebook unit sales is dominated by Amazon at 74 % with the balance held by other online retailers: GooglePlay, Kobo, Nook, Apple, and miscellaneous others.
Next on the list of publishing predictions is an increase in
eBook unit market share.
The author portal also offers useful tools, like a sales heat map that authors can use to geo - target their marketing efforts and, for Amazon Publishing authors, a beta program that lists daily
Kindle ebook unit sales.
The AAP reported that «total eBook net sales revenue [for US publisher] for 2011 was $ 21.5 million, a gain of 332.6 % over 2010; this represents 3.4 million
eBook units sold in 2011, up 303.3 %.»
On ebook unit sales, the AAP's share of all Kindle ebooks sold dropped progressively from 45 % in February 2014 to under 32 % in September 2015.
Kindle boss Jeff Bezos told USA Today that he expects Kindle
ebook unit sales to exceed paperback sales on Amazon within 9 - 12 months.
For its part, NPD says when combining print and
ebook unit sales, ebooks» percentage of the total dropped from 21 percent in 2016 to 19 percent in 2017.
For all categories of ebooks, Author Earnings figures purely «indie» publishing accounted for at least 38 percent of
ebook units and 22 percent of ebook dollars in the last nine months of 2017.
It's a numbers game: like it or not, independent publishing already gives almost half
the ebook unit sales of the market and seems unstoppable.
Obviously
their ebook unit will never compare to the sheer amount of money their operating system yields, Microsoft Office and 365 subscription sales, the cloud unit geared towards businesses or even their intellectual property and licensing division.
The news won't come as a surprise to anyone who has followed traditional ebook sales trends over the past few years: Nielsen's reports put 2016
ebook unit sales from the... Continue reading →
Author Earnings lists over 266 million
ebooks units sold, with only about 187 million print books.
With so many digital reading devices in the market, bodes well for the future of
their ebook unit.
The news won't come as a surprise to anyone who has followed traditional ebook sales trends over the past few years: Nielsen's reports put 2016
ebook unit sales from the top 30 traditional publishers down a full 16 % from their 2015 numbers.
According to Smashwords founder, Mark Coker,
eBook unit sales spike dramatically when the price points are between $ 3.99 and $ 4.99.