Digital Publishing News - Good e-Reader: Recent Episodes
Michael Kozlowski
There are a copious number of online self-publishing companies that promise aspiring authors the opportunity to distribute their ebook all over the world. Millions of authors publish with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, Draft2Digital, Kobo Writing Life, Nook Press and Smashwords. Most "authors" who self-publish an ebook never sell more than a handful and over 75% of all authors never earn a living through their writing. We live in a world full of terrible e-book titles that ruin ebook discovery and make it difficult to find a good book. It is no small wonder why e-book sales have plummeted in recent years.
YouGov conducted a recent poll that said the most desirable job in is an author – with 60% of people saying they’d like to do it for a living. This is a 24% higher than those who want to be a TV presenter and a remarkable 29% higher than those who want to be a movie star. I can see why being an author would be sexy, you only have to look at the success of J.K. Rowling. Sadly, being an author does not earn significant revenue. A survey of 1,007 self-published writers – one of the most comprehensive insights into the growing market to date – found that while a small percentage of authors were bringing in sums of $100,000-plus, average earnings were just $10,000 a year. This amount, however, is significantly skewed by the top earners, with less than 10% of self-publishing authors earning about 75% of the reported revenue and half of writers earning less than $500. Meanwhile in the United States the median household income in the US is $52k per year and the average indie author from the USA earns less than $100 over the lifetime of their book.
Self-published indie authors are verifiably capturing at least 24% – 34% of all ebook sales in each of the five English-language markets; it’s not just a US-only phenomenon. When you also include the uncategorized authors, the vast majority of whom are also self-published, the true indie share in each market lies somewhere between 30% – 40%. Sadly the lionshare of the revenue that indie authors generate are by the quintessential 1% who are generating a few hundred thousand dollars a month and everyone else is fighting over the scraps.
Many authors do not derive their primary living from their literary works and are considered chiefly hobbyists. They are simply amateurs who submit books just because they can. There is no quality control mechanism for companies that offer self-publishing solutions, they are just really happy to have as many users as possible. They play the numbers game, the more authors that publish, the more money they will generate from commissions, even if it just a few sales per title, it all adds up. Smashwords CEO Mark Coker will lambast authors who exclusively publish with Amazon, because the more writers that do that, the less money Smashwords will generate. For all of his soapbox proclamations on how it is bad for authors, it is all about money with him.
The vast majority of self-published authors will statistically not earn very much from their titles and will be alone and marginalized. They will not join any respectable writing organization, because they are not professionals.
Major writing organizations such as the Romance Writers of America, Canadian Writing Union and Published Authors Network all accept indie published authors In order to join these organizations you have to earn ‘x’ amount of money over a single calendar year, where the specified amount for indie publishers is a multiple of the requirement for traditionally-published authors minimum income, because it is easier to make money by going indie. The Published Authors Network has strict requirements on who can join their organization. You have to earn $1,000 in the form of an advance on a single Eligible Novel. Or you have to earn $1,000 in the form of royalties or a combination of advance plus royalties on a single published Eligible Novel. Finally, you have to pull in $5,
Audiobooks are the fastest growing segment in publishing and everyone within the industry is very bullish about the future of the format. There are a number of new start-ups that are making waves and retailers are beginning to release that audiobooks are worth investing in.
The global audiobook industry is currently evaluated at 2.8 billion dollars and this is primarily due to the sheer amount of new titles that were produced in 2015. 43,000 new audiobooks were released this year, which is a slight increase from the 36,000 that came out in 2014 and a far cry from the 20,000 that were issued in 2013.
According to a recent report by the American Association of publishers downloaded audio had the highest growth in the first eight months of 2015. The number of audiobooks sold increased 43.3% in August, compared to August 2014. This brings the year-to-date growth for this format to 37.8%, compared to the same timeframe in 2014.
Since the industry is generating so much revenue many companies that specialize in statistics are beginning to pay attention. For the first time audiobook and audiobook subscription services are being tracked by Nielsen StatShot. 20 publishers proclaimed that the subscription model for audiobooks are actually proving to be more lucrative than e-Books. Approximately 3.88 million audiobooks were downloaded in 2015 compared to the 2.47 million eBooks that were read.
New Digital Distribution Models
Publishers are willing to experiment with different models for audiobook distribution because they don’t abide by the same agency model that applies to e-books. Companies like Blackstone Audio, Gildan Media, Hachette Audio, HarperAudio, and Naxos Audiobooks have all committed themselves to audiobook subscription services and bundling.
Scholastic is one company that has been at the forefront of embracing alternative distribution methods and are willing to take risks. The company currently has over 400 audiobook titles, which is an overall increase by 32% over 2014. One of the big reasons why their catalog has grown is because production costs have decreased by over 50% since 2009.The audio editions that have proven to be the most popular in 2015 were movie driven titles such as the Hunger Games and Goosebumps series.
Linda Lee, VP, Publisher Scholastic Audio told me that "The traditional audio customer will find your titles wherever you offer them, however, many of these non-traditional distribution models are targeted to the non-traditional audio user and/or customers who have never listened to an audiobook before. The hope is that through a subscription or bundling model, a non-audio user will be enticed to try and audio and become a convert. Additionally, these types of models offer the chance to ‘sample’ your product – I.e. Offering the first few titles in a series – hoping to hook the customer, who will then go to a more traditional full price model to find subsequent titles in the series once they are hooked. "
The Audiobook Subscription model
It is hard to have a conversation about companies involved in the unlimited audiobook space and not talk about Amazon. Their Kindle Unlimited platform features over 2,500 audiobooks, which is fairly paltry compared to their competition, but they have made it work.
Kindle Unlimited has only been available for a full year, but the company already commands the largest market share. A survey report from Peter Hildick-Smith's Codex Group confirmed they have more subscribers than any other company.
The report also showed that Amazon's subscriber base grew by 10% between November 2014 and April 2015, while the customer base of its smaller competitors fell by an average of 30% over the same period.
Scribd originally launched as a document sharing service almost a decade ago and was one of the first companies that got into the unlimited e-book subscription space. In 2014 the company got bullish about audiobooks and they ironed out ...
Adult coloring books is the hottest new segment in publishing and everyone is getting involved. Disney has released a new 3D coloring book based on popular characters, to mainstream celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and George R.R. Martin who have jumped into the fray.
The current coloring-book craze was ignited in 2013, when Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford published “Secret Garden.” The seemingly obscure offering had an initial printing of 16,000, but has since exploded into a runaway international bestseller, selling nearly 6 million copies — almost 4 million in the past five months alone, according to Debra Matsumoto, marketing manager at Laurence King publishers.
This phenomenon has primarily been fueled online with colorists posting their elaborate creations on Facebook and Pinterest. Here professional and newbies alike debate such issues such as Prismacolor versus gel pens, or how to make that tricky owl in the corner pop. The coloring craze has even spawned all sorts of offline gatherings — coloring clubs, meet-ups, even coloring parties at bars.
There is growing medical evidence that not only are adult coloring books stress revilers but contribute to your overall health. It has been well documented that art therapy is helpful among people dealing with a variety of conditions, such as depression, dementia, anxiety, and PTSD. One 2006 study, found that mindfulness art therapy for women with cancer helped to significantly decrease symptoms of physical and emotional distress during treatment. Another study from the same year concluded that after only one hour of art therapy, adult cancer patients of all ages “overwhelmingly expressed comfort” and a desire to continue with the therapy.
The adult coloring book craze is fairly limited to print and this has resulted in a number of booksellers posting strong revenue.
WH Smith has just reported an 8% in profit in the 12 months to the end of August 2015, compared to the year before, with "coloring therapy" books helping to deliver a strong second half for the high street sector of the business. Stephen Clarke said "In the High Street business, our profit focused strategy continues to deliver sustainable growth. In our core categories of stationery and books we had a stronger second half helped by the new phenomenon of 'color therapy' for adults.
"We've always loved adult coloring books, featuring them from late 2012 when the 'Colour Me Good' Ryan Gosling and Benedict Cumberbatch titles were selling like hot cakes. But the popularity of the new batch of coloring books has even taken us by surprise -- a nice surprise -- sales are up 1786% year on year. It doesn't seem to be slowing down either. I suppose once you've colored in one book, you need to buy another," Verity Batchelded, Head of Marketing for Book Depository, told The Huffington Post Australia.
Bookstores in Brazil are reporting strong revenue too, in April, two adult coloring books were the bestselling books in the whole country with 232,000 copies sold at the nation’s top 12 bookstores. By comparison, the 18 next bestselling books combined sold just 8,000 more copies during the same time period, according to the website Publishing Perspectives, which tracks book sales. By May, nine of the top 20 bestsellers were coloring books including the top eight books in the nonfiction category. Between April 20th and May 17th, coloring books accounted for over 17% of all book sales, and almost 15% of industry revenue.
Coloring books has been one of the critical segments in publishing over the course of 2015. This is a niche that traditionally sells better in print form, rather than interactive e-books or dedicated apps. Stay tuned to our blog next week, when I will discuss the best methodologies to self-publish an adult coloring books and how to get it into bookstores.
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Google is privately testing a new service that will compete against Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles. The new program is called Accelerated Mobile Pages and 30 different publishers are participating in he closed beta program.
Accelerated Mobile Pages aims to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web. Google wants webpages with rich content like video, animations and graphics to work alongside smart ads, and to load instantaneously. They also want the same code to work across multiple platforms and devices so that content can appear everywhere in an instant—no matter what type of phone, tablet or mobile device you’re using.
There are a number of benefits with the Accelerated Mobile Pages program that the established players in the industry can't match. There is support for subscriptions and paywalls. Google wants help in defining exactly what publishers need by their closed beta program.
via Google Blog
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A new book, to be released by Vintage Books (Knopf) next month, will provide interested readers with an in-depth account of the Edward Snowden scandal, from start to finish. Beginning with a team from The Guardian being invited to hear what this one-time senior security official with the NSA had to tell following his email that promised the dirt, and winding through a tricky path of a government far overstepping its bounds, this book--The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man by Luke Harding--promises readers all of the information from a top investigative journalist.
At the risk of sounding obtuse...Edward who?
Not that Edward Snowden is in any way not a major topic of importance to freedom, and not to say that this book won't bring to light some never-before-read facts directly from the NSA system administrator's own mouth, but there's a larger issue here. Why did readers have to wait so long for this book? And given that it's releasing next month in paperback, why are we waiting still?
Now and Then Reader, a long-form journalism ebook publisher, produced a title on the death of Osama Bin Laden within record time following the actions of SEAL Team Six. Even more impressively, ebook developer Vook had two titles standing at the ready, Why Romney Lost and Why Obama Lost, both books having been written, edited, and formatted for digital devices in advance of the election. Upon the same-day announcement of the official voting results, engineers at Vook simply had to press a button to publish the appropriate title.
But if the research has been done and verified on the upcoming Snowden title, the book written, the editing finalized, and the entire manuscript formatted for printing, why is it not in the hands of readers on their devices? What's the hold up?
While there are certainly considerations in the publishing industry that affect the launch date of all books, it seems almost irresponsible to announce that a title on such an important global event involving illegal NSA surveillance and treason, an event that has caused governments around the world to reconsider what it means to operate in the digital age, will be coming some time next month.
The issue itself is still unresolved legally, with the US Supreme Court refusing last November to hear the arguments that the government did or did not have the right to gather metadata on phone calls within and to the country.
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