Latest Author Earnings Report: ebook, print, audio

if-you-dont-build-your-dream

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The first graphic in the latest report by Author Earnings shows that in two short years, the market share of paid unit sales between indie and the “Big 5” e-books has more than inverted.
The Big 5 now account only for less than a quarter of e-book purchases on Amazon, while books by independent authors are closing in on a whopping forty-five percent.
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E-book dollars earned by Big 5 publishers also shrunk, despite the greater profitability of e-books over print books. Overall, US e-book sales have actually gone up in dollar terms.
“Data Guy” is presenting some of his methodical approach and findings in more detail onstage at the Digital Book World 2016 Conference, on March 9, 2016, in NYC.

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How Accurate are the Findings?
The “validation dataset” always end up matching the actual Amazon-reported total daily sales for the group to within 6%… and most of the time to within 2%.
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More “Full-Priced” than Discounted Books.
The share of indie self-published titles on Amazon’s bestseller lists, at 27%, has not changed since September 2015.  It is still more than double than those of the “Big 5” titles. Significantly, has changed the degree to which Amazon’s overall Top 20 Best Sellers, and even the overall Top 10, are dominated by self-published titles from indie authors — nearly half of them “full-priced” sales, at prices between $2.99 and $5.99.

Author Earnings Explains:
“On January 10, the date our spider ran,

  1. 4 of Amazon’s overall Top 10 Best Selling ebooks were self-published indie titles
  2. 10 of Amazon’s overall Top 20 Best Selling ebooks were self-published indie titles
  3. 56 of Amazon’s overall Top 100 Best Selling ebooks — more than half — were self-published indie titles
  4. 20 of Amazon’s overall Top 100 Best Selling ebooks were indie titles priced between $2.99 and $5.99

The day we pulled the data for this report revealed 20 of Amazon’s overall Top 125 Best Selling e-books were self-published indie titles NOT ENROLLED in Kindle Unlimited.”

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My advice: there is absolutely no reason
to discount or giveaway your book for free
to reach bestselling status.
Don’t devalue your titles!
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Print and Audio-Book Numbers.
Author Earnings measured not only sales of e-books, but also print and audio-books.  “As of January 2016, Amazon was selling roughly 119,000 audiobooks per day — about $2,100,000 worth — which were generating $204,000 a day in author earnings.”

“We think audiobooks will be a huge growth area for self-published indie authors in 2016.  We can’t wait to see what these audio-sales pie charts will look like, a year from now.
In 2016, the reach of indie self-published authors isn’t limited by any means to ebooks.”
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“Every indie author should seriously consider releasing print-on-demand paperback editions and — as soon as quality narration can be afforded or arranged — audiobook editions of their books.”
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Read the whole report with lots of details:
http://authorearnings.com/report/february-2016-author-earnings-report/

 

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