This past March, the London-based Enders Analysis media team analyzed the US Amazon’s 100 top-selling ebooks and found that 40 were self-published. Of those top sellers, Enders found:
- The average price of the self-published ebooks was $2.41.
- All others of that top 100 had an average price of $6.23.
- Ebooks from the Big Five averaged $9.10.
- Romance or erotica claimed 65 percent of the self-published top sellers.
- Sci-fi and fantasy accounted for 22 percent of the self-published titles, “usually with a strong romance theme.”
At the Bookseller, Research analyst Joseph Evans writes [archived subscription-only link], “To date, self-publishing has become a fairly large presence in the ebook sector, but the impact on the publishing industry as a whole has been more limited. Self-publishing represents a significant but separate books market, with low prices, focused on series within genre categories. Readers are more sensitive to price than reputation and read in high volumes.”
Evans discusses disadvantages faced by self-publishers, including the lack of mainstream reviews, awards, and in-store marketing. Evans writes, “We think the general lack of literary fiction or nonfiction success in ebook format suggests there is still a stigma among readers. However, we expect these disadvantages to reduce if a breakout literary hit is (and remains) self-published, or if a major author decides to self-publish. The stigma will be reduced and establishment processes will have to catch up. The self-publishing option is only going to grow more attractive.”
The Enders advice to the trade: Cherish your booksellers and stress the good stuff. “With the growth of an unfiltered, uncurated market of self-published books, there is an opportunity for publishers to become guarantors of quality—as some imprints already are within genres.… [Then] value shifts from creation to curation, which is exactly where publishers can position themselves.”
Bottom line: Evans is hardly wrong that the trade’s best hope may be in stressing the distinction of its traditionally curated selections—that’s “gatekeeping” in indie-speak. But if Enders’s analysis is meant to raise red flags, the report does not express any conviction that self-publishing will overtake traditional channels, stating, “In reality, a wholesale move of the book industry to self-publishing will not happen.”
The report comes just as the UK’s biggest chain, Waterstones, announces that it’s having Kobo handle its ebook business, (see our Links of Interest). Remember that Borders handed its online business to Amazon. The Bookseller’s Philip Jones writes, “There is now no home-grown challenger to Amazon’s digital might.” And that “might” is an estimated 90 percent of the UK ebook market now controlled by Amazon.
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.
