A few months ago, we reported from Digital Book World that pricing was a concern in the traditional publishing community—primarily, the concern was that publishers weren’t devoting sufficient resources to price experimentation, and that price points were possibly too high for debut authors.
In its latest report, Author Earnings says, “The average price of a Big Five ebook dropped from $10.31 in January 2016 to $8.67 in May 2016.” Debut authors have seen their frontlist prices (not backlist prices) go down; that is probably the most solid and clear takeaway. Here are a couple other facets of the newest Author Earnings report:
- While prior reports have focused on Amazon bestsellers, this latest data set is much wider and claims to account for 82 percent of Amazon’s daily ebook sales (or everything except titles selling less than a copy a day).
- The report estimates that about half of all ebook sales are going to indie authors.
Also, we have learned from the team that about fifty authors share their royalty information (across about 1,000 titles) with Author Earnings. This is what guides the report’s earning estimates—enabling the creation of an earning curve—along with consultation with industry insiders to calculate traditional authors’ earnings.
Dare we say it? The Author Earnings reports are becoming increasingly difficult to parse and understand, even if you’ve been following along from the beginning. Consider just this one graph title: “Additional Amazon Author Earnings from Other, Non-Bestseller-Listed Ebooks Going to Authors Who Have at Least One Category Bestseller-Listed Ebook.” Such charts preach to a choir that was converted a very long time ago.
Bottom line: Author Earnings always looks for new and persuasive ways to emphasize how much more indie authors are earning and how much traditional authors (and publishers) are losing, at least when it comes to the Amazon sales environment. This is in line with the original intent in starting the project two years ago as an effort to demonstrate self-publishing’s financial viability. But the data analysis has ventured very deep into the weeds and isn’t written in a way that will appeal to or reach people who are outside of the indie community. For enlightening information on indie author sales trends that’s more accessible, even if anecdotal, we recommend taking a look at Joanna Penn’s transparency report on her book sales income in the past year.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
