#AuthorEarnings and International Book Sales

Two of the more interesting Author Earnings posts I’ve done were in September 2015 and June 2016. 

Well, Hugh Howey and his intriguing Data Guy have another, probably controversial, report out…

Even the title is somewhat “controversial”—February 2017 Big, Bad, Wide & International Report: covering Amazon, Apple, B&N, and Kobo ebook sales in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

1st Excerpt:

“Today, with the click of a button, any author can start selling any title they wish simultaneously in 12 country-specific Amazon stores, 36 country-specific Kobo ebook stores, and over 40 country-specific Apple ebook stores.”

2nd Excerpt:

“…the four other major English-language markets outside the US….have also been consistently underestimated and under-reported by traditional publishing-industry statistics.”

3rd (rather large but exciting) Excerpt:

“…we’ve substantially overhauled and refined our AuthorEarnings methodology.  We can now measure each retailer’s total sales in each country with far more precision.

“So this time, we rolled up our sleeves and basically went for the whole enchilada:

• The top five English-language countries
• The fifteen largest ebook stores
• 750,000 top-selling ebook titles, in all genres and categories.
• All of it calibrated against 700,000 points of raw, unfiltered daily sales data, from over 20,000 distinct ebook titles across all 15 stores.

“When we were done, we were looking at the most comprehensive international picture of English-language ebook sales available anywhere. And now, we’re excited to share it with authors everywhere around the world.”

Somewhat obviously, the image up there is from their methodology page; and, there are 13 other images that pretty well sum-up what these two guys are doing that so upsets the traditional publishers…

And, if I counted right, there are 10 other colorful, intriguing images on the Report Page, like this one:

Just a few excerpts from their Conclusions:

“Our look at the wider world of ebook retailers tells us that the rise of ebook sales in general, and indie publishing in particular, are not limited to the US nor to a single retailer (Amazon); they are international, industry-wide phenomena.”

“The US currently leads the world in both ebook penetration rate and the indie share of that market, but other ebook markets are starting to catch up: particularly the other 4 major English-language ones. Taken together, ebook sales in these 4 additional markets add a combined 25% to the US-only total.”

And, for those who still think traditional publishing has it all…

“…somewhat counter-intuitively, self-published indie authors are proving to be far more capable of taking advantage of their global digital reach to achieving commensurate international sales than traditionally published authors are.”

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Author Earnings ~ “…Turning of the Tide…?”

I’ve posted before about Hugh Howey‘s initiative Author Earnings.

Image Courtesy of Mike Johnson ~ http://www.freeimages.com/photographer/mikecco-54698

Here’s the site explanation: 

“Our purpose is to gather and share information so that writers can make informed decisions. Our secondary mission is to call for change within the publishing community for better pay and fairer terms in all contracts. This is a website by authors and for authors.”

Today’s post will share a few of the highlights from Author Earning’s October Report…

“During the five short months since May, it seems that indies have somehow lost their market share gains of the preceding 18 months. This has been counterbalanced to a limited extent by a slight uptick in traditionally-published unit sales: both Big Five and Small/Medium Traditional Publishers have each gained roughly 1% in market share. But most of the lost indie market share seems to have instead gone to Amazon Imprints, who have gained a whopping 4% in market share.”

Might be hard to believe; but, that’s not as bad as it may sound…

“Despite the Big Five’s slight uptick in unit-sales market share, their share of consumer ebook dollars has continued to drop—albeit less steeply than in previous quarters.”

And…

“…the biggest recent winners seem to be the Small/Medium publisher authors, whose share of total Kindle author earnings has surpassed 20% for the first time.”

Taking the link to the October Report will give you a huge amount of information and speculation…

For non-link-takers, I’ll finish with:

“We have no idea whether this reversal represents the new normal—no clue at all whether what we’re seeing is a single-quarter blip before the previous relentless market-share shift toward non-traditional ebooks resumes; or whether we are seeing the true beginning of a turn in the digital book tide.

“But regardless, if you’re a traditionally published author of longstanding tenure, this change is probably good news.

“On the other hand, if you’re a relatively new traditionally published author or traditional publishing aspirant, the news is a whole lot less exciting. Because it seems the benefits of this recent increase in traditional ebook market share are not being felt equally by all authors…”

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#AuthorEarnings ~ Are There Any?

Sure, folks with lots of money can buy their way into the BookWorld and sometimes make a killing.

Image Courtesy of José A. Warletta ~ http://www.freeimages.com/photographer/jwarletta-34460

Then, there are the very few authors who happen to land a publishing deal and continue to make a decent amount of money.

Still, most writers make very little…

But…

Between “most” and “the very few” there are “lots” of authors doing fairly well.

Enter author Hugh Howey and his anonymous “DataMagician” who have been raising a ruckus about IndieAuthor earnings.

I did a post last year with lots of links to their various studies—Author Earnings and What’s Really Going on in the Book World.

Today, I’ll share some info from their latest report—May 2016 Author Earnings Report: the definitive million-title study of US author earnings.

They begin with:

“Data in the publishing biz is hard to come by. Without widespread sharing of data by retailers, publishers, agents, and authors, we are all left like the blind to describe different parts of the same but seemingly disjointed elephant. Two years ago, AuthorEarnings released its first report on a new part of this elephant: E-book sales on Amazon.com. Our report stirred controversy, as it described a formerly unseen world of publishing data.”

They then reveal:

“So for this report, we went deeper. Instead of just looking at Amazon’s bestseller lists, we had our spider follow links to also-bought recommendations and also through each authors’ full catalog. This resulted in a million-title dataset, our most comprehensive and definitive look yet at author earnings. We were able to tally up precisely how many indie authors, Big Five authors, small/medium press authors, and Amazon-imprint authors are currently making enough from Amazon.com sales to land in a number of ‘tax brackets’.”

And, no matter what you personally feel about Amazon, they do sell an amazing number of books (and diapers…).

Here’s a breakdown of what they captured info on:

Nearly every single Kindle book selling 1 or more copy per day. (98.5% of them)

90% of all Kindle titles selling at least 2-3 copies a week

81% of all Kindle titles selling 1 or more copy a week

64% of all Kindle titles selling 2 or more copies a month

32% of all Kindle titles listed in the Amazon US Kindle store.

There’s lots of analysis of the numbers from their latest data-exploration in the full article; but, I’ll share a bit of what I consider important:

“…the Big Five’s year-long plummet in overall ebook unit sales appears to have finally leveled off, leaving them with roughly 23% of Amazon’s ebook unit sales.”

“…every author who debuted anytime in the last century and is currently accumulating income at a rate of $10,000 a year or more from their Amazon US sales alone….almost 9,900 such authors”

“…Almost half of those 9,900 authors also appear in the $25000-or-better bracket…”

“…over 2,500 authors…are currently earning at a living-wage run rate — $50,000/year or more — from just their Amazon sales.”

“1,340 authors are earning $100,000/year or more from Amazon sales.”

And, just in case you wondered:

“On Amazon alone, the data shows over a thousand indie authors earning a full-time living right now with their self-published titles.”

However, doing a little math with a few of their numbers, it seems there are over 300,000 book sales a day on Amazon—and, my best intuitive guess is that somewhere around 100,000 authors are selling those books (which should mean there are many more authors selling none)…

I think we’re still able to say most writers make very little…

And, if you want to do a little self-therapy on why writers continue to work at writing and attempting to sell their books, check out my past post—Selling Books Is Hard. ~ So, Why Do Writers Keep Trying?
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Author Earnings

Speculations about how to have a bestseller are running rampant on the ‘Net.

Image Courtesy of Krzysztof Szkurlatowski; 12frames.eu ~ http://www.freeimages.com/profile/hisks

I’ve written before about what authors can earn and how most writers sell very few books.

Some folks feel that it’s fate or blowing just the right way on the promotion dice that reaps monetary rewards.

One thing that might favor large book sales seems to be writing within popular genres, though even that’s no guarantee.

Certainly, being famous helps, as does doing something felonious…

Still, for a writer to have any chance at making money, there are certain things that do raise the odds.

Yet, to quote Mark Coker, CEO of Smashwords:

“The forces that determine a book’s sales performance are often multi-dimensional, synergistic, opaque, delayed or simply not apparent.”

One thing that seems to be extremely important is to have an e-book edition.

Smashwords has published nearly 318,000 e-books in the last six years.

In 2014, the retailers they distribute to sold over 25 million dollars worth of Smashwords e-books.

Last year, I published the results of Smashwords survey of potential author earnings.

Well, the 2014 survey results are out—they examined the “aggregated retail and library sales data of Smashwords books and then crunched the numbers based on various quantifiable characteristics of the book.”

I’m sure the insights from the survey can help drive sales through other distributors as well; and, even though I published my last book through FastPencil, and will publish the print edition of my next book with them, the e-book will also go through Smashwords—and, I still may not sell very many books…

Let me share that quote from Smashwords’ CEO again:

The forces that determine a book’s sales performance are often multi-dimensional, synergistic, opaque, delayed or simply not apparent.

Yet, there are few authors who don’t want lots of people to read their book—my motivation for selling my book while still giving it away…

So, here are the Key Findings from their survey:

The ebook sales power curve is extremely steep

Readers prefer longer ebooks

Pricing

FREE still works great, but it’s losing some mojo

Preorders yield sales advantage

Series yield sales advantage

Best-performing series have longer books

FREE series starters pack a punch

All those findings are explained in more detail at 2014 Smashwords Survey Reveals New Opportunties for Indie Authors.

And, here’s a slide presentation about it ( note the controls at the bottom ):

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Making Money As A Writer

I’ve written many posts about writers and money.

Image courtesy of Caltiva Creatividad ~ http://www.freeimages.com/profile/caltiva

Some folks think that only the journalist-type or the non-fiction writer should think about making money…

Some folks think that fiction writers shouldn’t consider money and only write for the love of the art…

Some folks think the new self-publishing juggernaut can slam them into the mega-sales bracket…

Thing is, there’s a bit of truth in all those ways of thinking—a bit…

The full truth about any individual’s chance of making money with their writing involves, at least, the following factors:

* How strong their desire is to make money

* How much money they can spare to help them make money

* How much time they have to spend working toward making money

* The choice of venues in which they’re willing to try to make money

From my experience, I’d recommend a writer soberly consider those factors; then, based on their deliberations, make a sound judgement about one more factor:

* Can they generate the staying-power to pursue, faithfully and diligently, the path toward earnings they want to follow?

That’s my two-cents’ worth…

Now, I’ll share two very different perspectives on making money as a writer.

The first is from a friend of mine—Angela Yuriko Smith—and is called Three Ways to Build Your Byline.

Her method is simple and sound; and, you might call it the boot-strap method.

Just a couple excerpts from her article:

“In the beginning, you need to show your talents off anywhere you can.”

“It doesn’t matter if you were paid for them or not.  All that matters is you have published peices of paper with your name on them.”

“Now that so much is on the internet, your links are also your clips.  Save the title and link to everything you get published.”

“Give your talents away to everyone who will take them.  I have had so many doors open up because I volunteered to lend my writing for a good cause.”

“Let your words be powerfully promiscuous.”

Do, if you have any desire to make money as a writer, go read Angela’s full piece.

Next, I’ll offer a video with two of today’s rising stars in the writing-for-money “market”—they both make money talking about making money—yet, they both have some good ideas to offer for your consideration…

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