At his How to Publish in Germany site, Munich-based journalist and self-publishing author Matthias Matting has offered a response to the article at Smashwords we’ve mentioned elsewhere in this issue. Germany is considered the third ebook market after the U.S. and U.K.—although the Chinese self-publishing serials market is huge and not clearly understood yet. (It’s called “online reading” there.)
Drawing on the database of Amazon.de sales of ebooks compiled by his site for independent authors, SelfPublisherBible.de, Matting has surveyed the key price points he can see in calendar year 2015 and written up the results.
He reports that, while an expected lead develops quickly for 99-cent titles, those priced at €3.99 ($4.36) and €4.99 ($5.46), combined, sell more units than the 99-cent titles. And when Matting considers the success of titles in the top-100 and top-1000 rankings in terms of revenue (30 percent for those below €2.99 and 70 percent for those above), he discerns “a new sales peak” at €8.99 ($9.82) and €9.99 ($10.90).
Bottom line: As Matting concludes, there seem to be two ways to try to earn money from ebook sales in the German market’s structure as he sees it in these figures, and it’s a kind of gamble either way. “For 99 cents,” he writes, “your book stands a higher chance of actually getting into the top 100. On the other hand, if you manage to get into the top 100 at €2.99 or €3.99 (and quite a lot do), you will earn much more.”
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.
