E-Book 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,
One of the most common questions people have with e-readers and e-books is the exact number of pages are inconsistent with the print edition. This is primarily due to the fact that e-books don't have "pages" in the usual sense. Anytime you see a mention of e-book pagecount, it's an abstraction. Sort of like if I told you something was an hour's walk away.
The "page count" on e-readers is based on an arbitrary metric and may vary across platforms. It is not set by the publisher, so it will differ from the print edition.
Page counts and line-spacing are basically non-standardized. Some e-Book platforms may count 250 consecutive words as a "page", while others may use a different metric. Some also exclude front and back matter, dedications, acknowledgments, author bios, and other non-relevant content. No one actually knows what any single metric is, but there are some approximations being thrown around.
The big problem with e-book page numbers being different than printed books is due to software that packages EPUBS. Adobe has a different system for anyone using their Digital Publishing solution than a big publisher that uses in-house tools based on best practices by the IDPF. The other problem is that companies like B&N and Kobo have different way to show progress in a book. Sometimes they will show you how many hours are remaining and in other cases page numbers are based on the chapter you are reading.
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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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Amazon prematurely unveiled Kindle Unlimited yesterday morning. This is a new subscription service that costs $9.99 and will allow you to read as many books as you want on a monthly basis.
Kindle Unlimited will launch with 600,000 eBook and audiobook titles. Each title will be available to read on multiple devices, such as Android and iOS. A free 30 day trial will also be available when the service launches later this year.
Major publishers such as HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster will not be contributing content with Kindle Unlimiteds launch. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos did meet with CBS CEO Leslie Moonves earlier in the week to talk about eBooks, maybe contributing backlist and midlist titles had something to do with it.
Smaller publishers will play a major role in Unlimited with Algonquin, Bloomsbury, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Open Road, Scholastic and Workman. Amazon intends on paying them a wholesale rate for each title opened and read. This direct agreement is also being made to all of the Harry Potter Books via Pottermore and also the Hunger Games Trilogy
The bulk of the 600,000 titles that are available for Unlimited will be contributing by self-published authors who enrolled in Kindle Direct Publishing Select. Writers who participate under this program will automatically be opted it and paid out whenever someone reads 10% of the book or more. The money will be paid to the authors through the one or two million dollars that is added to the KDP Select pool per month.
Existing eBook subscription sites stand to gain in the short-term as most of them will be referenced in Unlimited. Scribd, Oyster and others will be mentioned in the same sentence and they all have major publisher support. Amazon is mainly launching with smaller presses, but most of the big five all support the smaller companies with their backlist and midlist titles.
Today on the show, Michael Kozlowski and Mercy Pilkington break down all of the news from yesterday. You will get a sense on concerns indie authors have on payments and royalties. Will KDP Select be a compelling value proposition for authors, outside of the Kindle Lending Library? Finally, will Kindle offer yet another cool feature that will be the deciding factor on your next e-reader purchase?
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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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Welcome to another Good e-Reader Week in review! Today we sum up all of the most important stories from over the past week and give you the essential information. We know busy people are busy living their lives! What with kids, work, and the multitude of daily responsibilities, sometimes it's hard to keep checking our site daily.
This week we have had our hands-on reviews of 3 different devices, the Asus EEE NOTE, the Book by Augen and the EXOPC! We give you a brief play by play of our experiences with them.
If you are into books and reading, you will love our segment outlining the essential ebooks coming out in April. Although if you do not have an e-reader or tablet, all of the books we mention are available in hardcover on the dates listed.
Lots of news this week on tablets and e-readers and we give you the heads up on the most important and newsworthy items of the week. Of course we have songs, Android news, and all sorts of other tidbits! This is a fun episode so check it out.
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