Back in 2012, there were many headlines about the tremendous growth in self-publishing output as demonstrated by the increase in ISBNs purchased by indie authors through Bowker. For that year, Bowker publicized a 59 percent growth in self-published works over 2011—and, more amazingly, a 422 percent growth over 2007.
Since then, Bowker has released annual stats that still show growth in the sector, but these numbers always come with important caveats, including:
- Bowker’s figures don’t reflect all of the self-publishing activity out there. They can’t count books that don’t have ISBNs, and a considerable volume of self-pub titles are published and distributed without ISBNs.
- Bowker’s counts are for ISBNs, not book titles. A single book title may use several ISBNs (e.g., one for the print edition, another for the ebook edition, and so on).
According to Bowker, ISBNs for self-published titles reached 727,125, up from 599,721 in 2014, representing a 21 percent increase in one year. The increase since 2010 is 375 percent.
But more important to us is where the growth occurred. Bowker’s numbers indicate more authors using Amazon’s CreateSpace (which is free to use) than ever before; older, fee-based self-publishing services are falling out of favor. Here’s a selected glimpse (again, remember these are ISBN counts coming out of each service per year):
- CreateSpace titles in 2010: 35,693
- CreateSpace titles in 2015: 423,718 (+1,087 percent)
- Author Solutions titles in 2010: 41,304
- Author Solutions titles in 2015: 23,930 (-42 percent)
The only area of Author Solutions’ business that saw an increase in 2015 is WestBow, the Christian self-publishing imprint marketed through Thomas Nelson.
Bowker’s report points to three other big players (based on ISBN usage) in the self-publishing space, including:
- Smashwords (ebooks only): nearly 100,000 titles in 2015, but declining 13.6 percent from 2014 to 2015
- Lulu: about 85,000 titles in 2015, up just barely from 2014
- Blurb: over 33,000 titles in 2015—more than Author Solutions—climbing from a nearly nonexistent business in 2010
For those wondering about IngramSpark’s place in all of this, we expect them to show up in Bowker’s 2016 report; we’re told the two companies were not “channel partners” until this year.
Bottom line: Bowker offers some indication of the growth of self-publishing, but we’ll never have a full grasp on the title output of self-published authors unless Amazon is forthcoming about the number of titles pushed through its Kindle Direct Publishing service. We’re heartened by the figures showing a decline in Author Solutions’ business, which could’ve been anticipated as far back as 2011, when ebooks started taking off and much cheaper and easier-to-use print-on-demand services—such as CreateSpace—became well known.
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.
