This year’s report from Bowker shows 1.6 million titles were self-published in 2018 alone—but the ultimate size of the self-publishing market is far greater
For several years now, Bowker has released an annual report on the number of self-publishing titles entering the market, based on the number of ISBNs it issues. Last year, they reported that 1 million such titles were published in 2017. And this year, they’re reporting 40 percent growth on top of that 1 million, with 1.6 million titles published by independent authors.
As we make plain every year in The Hot Sheet, the most interesting aspect of Bowker’s statistics isn’t the title growth, but the source of the self-publishing activity. Amazon is by far the market leader in terms of providing self-publishing services and distribution. Last year, they held 85 percent of the market; this year, they hold 91.5 percent, or 1.416 million self-published titles in print-on-demand editions. However, their market share is in fact even bigger, since Bowker can only track activity connected to an ISBN. The number of authors publishing ebooks without ISBNs, usually through Amazon, is believed to be vast.
Ingram Spark, one of Amazon’s competitors for self-published authors, does not issue ISBNs; authors must register their own ISBNs when using IngramSpark. Those customers fall under “small publishers” in Bowker’s report, and they are up by 4 percent this year at about 59,000 titles when looking at print and ebook titles combined and 44,000 for print only. Not nothing, but a rounding error when compared to Amazon’s 1.416 million for print alone.
When looking at Bowker’s ISBN stats issued to other service providers, these numbers jump out:
- Balboa Press, a division of Hay House that is run by Author Solutions, increased output by 75 percent in 2018. However, its volume remains modest at roughly 2,600 titles. The biggest Author Solutions brand in terms of title output, Xlibris, published nearly 8,500 titles in 2018, a decrease of about 6 percent from 2017.
- When adding together all of the Author Solutions imprints, their business has picked up by more than 2 percent in the past year. Still, between 2013 and 2018, its business declined by 40 percent. Despite the cost of publishing with Author Solutions (when compared to Amazon KDP, at least) and their poor reputation among successful self-published authors, their sales and marketing techniques clearly continue to draw authors in.
- Smashwords remains the second largest player when compared to Amazon. It distributes only ebooks and issued about 72,000 ISBNs last year, down by 3 percent from 2017. Lulu comes in third with about 67,000 ISBNs, which includes both print and ebook.
- Christian Faith Publishing enjoyed 65 percent growth in the last year. It focuses on Christian authors and is run by a former executive from Tate, a publishing services firm that was recently found guilty of embezzlement and extortion. Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware has written about CFP’s questionable marketing practices.
Bottom line: Last year, Amazon shuttered CreateSpace and merged those authors into its KDP platform, once used only for ebook management and distribution. Now that there is one consolidated platform for self-publishing both print and ebook editions, Amazon appears to have only solidified its leader position on the print side.
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.
