Smashwords have just found their authors three new markets. I love these guys. They do a good job finding ebook markets and are a pleasure to work with.
Here is the extract from their newsletter giving details of the new markets.
The full story is over at the Smashwords blog.
The new partners include:
• Odilo - Will expand our library distribution to 2,100 additional libraries in North America, Europe and South America.
• Tolino - Tolino will bring Smashwords titles to Germany's largest retailers, including Thalia, Welbilt, eBook.de and several others that collectively account for over 35% of Germany's ebook market.
• Yuzu - Yuzu is the the digital education platform and retailer operated by Barnes & Noble College, which operates 743 college bookstores serving 5 million college students and faculty members. The agreement will make it easier for a wide range of Smashwords Premium Catalog books to be assigned for classroom use by educators. The agreement also opens up exciting opportunities for self-published authors - especially college instructors and other educators - to publish low cost learning materials for the higher education market.
All Smashwords authors are automatically opted in to these new channels with the exception of authors who've selected the preemptive opt-out feature in the Smashwords Channel Manager (this feature prevents books from being opted in to new, unannounced channels). For all other authors, you'll have at least three weeks to opt out if you don't want distribution to any of these new partners. Obviously, we think all these channels are worthwhile because more distribution equals more sales opportunities!
Shipments will begin in January with books expected to first appear during the first quarter of 2016.
Tuesday, 15 December 2015
Monday, 2 November 2015
Real Facts and Figures for the Indie Author.
So we Indies and our e-books are dying out? Huh! Read the facts at Authorearnings.com
These guys are great and they deal in facts!!!
http://authorearnings.com/report/individual-author-earnings-tracked-across-7-quarters-feb-2014-sept-2015/?utm_source=Author+Earnings+Updates&utm_campaign=3214c87399-September_2015_Author_Earnings_Report9_5_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2438cb1801-3214c87399-128100545
When you look only at authors who started publishing less than a decade ago — in 2005 or later — the gap between the numbers of indie and traditionally published authors earning midlist-or-better incomes nearly disappears. Fast work, considering that none of those indies had widespread access to readers until 2010, giving their traditionally-published cohort-mates a five-year head start.
In fact, if we look at only authors who debuted in the “ebook era” — i.e. in 2010 or after — we see a reversal. At each annual earnings level, we find far more indies than traditionally-published authors who debuted in the last 5 years and are now earning that much or more.
If we look at the most recent debuts — authors whose first Kindle book was published in the last three years or so — the disparity grows:
There are fewer than half as many traditionally published authors as indie authors who debuted in the last 3 years and are now earning consistently at the $25K/year level or $50K/year level from Kindle ebooks.
This, then, is the world that all new entrants — whether traditionally published or indie — face in 2015. If you’re a debut author in 2015 with a manuscript in hand, or even an experienced author regaining the rights to your backlist or starting out with a fresh pen name, when choosing your publishing route it’s that right-most set of bars in every one of these charts that is today most relevant to you.
But what if you are destined to be more than a mid-lister? You don’t want to sell your work short. Isn’t it still worth being patient and pursuing the traditional route, to have a better shot at truly stellar earnings?
Surprisingly, as we move into six-figure-earning territory and beyond, the contrast between indie ebook earnings and traditionally-published ebook earnings becomes even more stark. Let’s look at:
In closing, while these trends in our changing industry are exciting, it’s also worth reminding ourselves that the odds against an author being able to make a full-time, high-paying career out of writing are long indeed. They always have been. There are many hundreds of thousands of US authors publishing books each year, both traditionally published and indie. Only a few fortunate thousand from among them will end up earning a living solely from their art, no matter which publishing path they take.
The choice of how to publish is never an easy one. It’s also worth reminding ourselves that what works best for one author may not be what works best for another. All paths have their merits and downsides, and neither can guarantee anyone success. But today, our chances of achieving that success as writers are better, and there are more ways we can make it happen, than at any previous time in history.
And that’s a wonderful thing.
Download the raw data this report is based on (.xslx)
Creative Commons License
Author Earnings is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
11 Responses to “Individual author earnings tracked across 7 quarters, Feb. 2014 – Sept. 2015”
Brian Meeks
September 23, 2015 at 3:59 pm
Hugh,
Like all of your reports before, this one continues to shine a light on the current state of the publishing world.
I’ve never questioned my decision to be an Indie author and even if the numbers showed that Traditional was the way to go, the freedom and control is what I like most about being an author/publisher.
That being said, this is the first year I’ll crack the 25K mark (possibly the 50K mark, but that depends on how the last quarter goes. Last year I hit 10K and the year before 5K. The big difference each year as been the number of titles I have available.
This business has changed my life and I’m very appreciative of all that you do for our community. Reading these sorts of reports always makes my day.
Thanks,
Brian D. Meeks
(Sometimes Arthur Byrne)
Reply
PG
September 23, 2015 at 4:14 pm
These guys are great and they deal in facts!!!
http://authorearnings.com/report/individual-author-earnings-tracked-across-7-quarters-feb-2014-sept-2015/?utm_source=Author+Earnings+Updates&utm_campaign=3214c87399-September_2015_Author_Earnings_Report9_5_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2438cb1801-3214c87399-128100545
When you look only at authors who started publishing less than a decade ago — in 2005 or later — the gap between the numbers of indie and traditionally published authors earning midlist-or-better incomes nearly disappears. Fast work, considering that none of those indies had widespread access to readers until 2010, giving their traditionally-published cohort-mates a five-year head start.
In fact, if we look at only authors who debuted in the “ebook era” — i.e. in 2010 or after — we see a reversal. At each annual earnings level, we find far more indies than traditionally-published authors who debuted in the last 5 years and are now earning that much or more.
If we look at the most recent debuts — authors whose first Kindle book was published in the last three years or so — the disparity grows:
There are fewer than half as many traditionally published authors as indie authors who debuted in the last 3 years and are now earning consistently at the $25K/year level or $50K/year level from Kindle ebooks.
This, then, is the world that all new entrants — whether traditionally published or indie — face in 2015. If you’re a debut author in 2015 with a manuscript in hand, or even an experienced author regaining the rights to your backlist or starting out with a fresh pen name, when choosing your publishing route it’s that right-most set of bars in every one of these charts that is today most relevant to you.
But what if you are destined to be more than a mid-lister? You don’t want to sell your work short. Isn’t it still worth being patient and pursuing the traditional route, to have a better shot at truly stellar earnings?
Surprisingly, as we move into six-figure-earning territory and beyond, the contrast between indie ebook earnings and traditionally-published ebook earnings becomes even more stark. Let’s look at:
In closing, while these trends in our changing industry are exciting, it’s also worth reminding ourselves that the odds against an author being able to make a full-time, high-paying career out of writing are long indeed. They always have been. There are many hundreds of thousands of US authors publishing books each year, both traditionally published and indie. Only a few fortunate thousand from among them will end up earning a living solely from their art, no matter which publishing path they take.
The choice of how to publish is never an easy one. It’s also worth reminding ourselves that what works best for one author may not be what works best for another. All paths have their merits and downsides, and neither can guarantee anyone success. But today, our chances of achieving that success as writers are better, and there are more ways we can make it happen, than at any previous time in history.
And that’s a wonderful thing.
Download the raw data this report is based on (.xslx)
Creative Commons License
Author Earnings is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
11 Responses to “Individual author earnings tracked across 7 quarters, Feb. 2014 – Sept. 2015”
Brian Meeks
September 23, 2015 at 3:59 pm
Hugh,
Like all of your reports before, this one continues to shine a light on the current state of the publishing world.
I’ve never questioned my decision to be an Indie author and even if the numbers showed that Traditional was the way to go, the freedom and control is what I like most about being an author/publisher.
That being said, this is the first year I’ll crack the 25K mark (possibly the 50K mark, but that depends on how the last quarter goes. Last year I hit 10K and the year before 5K. The big difference each year as been the number of titles I have available.
This business has changed my life and I’m very appreciative of all that you do for our community. Reading these sorts of reports always makes my day.
Thanks,
Brian D. Meeks
(Sometimes Arthur Byrne)
Reply
PG
September 23, 2015 at 4:14 pm
Historical Novel Society Review
Well! Wow! A review to end all review by a reviewer who really tuned into what I was trying to say. Thank you, A. K. Bell.
And because the review is Editor's Choice my novel is now entered into the HNS's Indie awards. much Joy!
Here is the link to the review: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/tizzie/
and the review:
Tizzie by p.d.r. lindsay
Naive and trusting, Tizzie never questions the life she leads as unpaid help in her brother’s household. Help is not quite correct – Tizzie is an accomplished cheese-maker, and by rights she should have a nice amount of money set by for her hard efforts, but brother Jack and rapacious sister-in-law Maggie have been stealing from her for years.
And not only her money. Tizzie was in love, but should she marry, her brother would have been obliged to pay her dowry, so he lied, making Tizzie believe her sweetheart had left without her. Since then, Tizzie has locked her feelings away – except for when it comes to Agnes, her niece who is destined to a life as unpaid help to her oldest brother. History repeating itself, but when Tizzie discovers how Jack stole her future, she vows she’ll not let the same happen to Agnes.
And so a silent and lethal power-struggle begins with Tizzie and Agnes fighting a losing battle against Maggie’s greed. Ms Lindsay does an excellent job of depicting the building tension, the slow tightening of the bonds of future servitude round a desperate ten-year-old girl and her helpless aunt. But Tizzie and Agnes have some allies, and the more Maggie pushes, the more Tizzie realises this is a fight she must win – for Agnes’ sake.
Set in the Yorkshire Dales at the end of the nineteenth century, Tizzie is not only the dark and gritty tale of a woman whose dreams were cruelly crushed by her brother and his wife. It is also a vibrant description of life in the 1880s, period detail inserted with impressive skill in a narrative that flowers into fantastic descriptions of the Dale while never losing pace and a sense of impending doom. This is a harrowing and addictive reading experience in which hope flickers feebly in the dark. But it does flicker, and it is quite impossible to remain unaffected by Tizzie’s determination to ensure her niece will have what she was denied – a life.
And because the review is Editor's Choice my novel is now entered into the HNS's Indie awards. much Joy!
Here is the link to the review: https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/tizzie/
and the review:
Tizzie by p.d.r. lindsay
Naive and trusting, Tizzie never questions the life she leads as unpaid help in her brother’s household. Help is not quite correct – Tizzie is an accomplished cheese-maker, and by rights she should have a nice amount of money set by for her hard efforts, but brother Jack and rapacious sister-in-law Maggie have been stealing from her for years.
And not only her money. Tizzie was in love, but should she marry, her brother would have been obliged to pay her dowry, so he lied, making Tizzie believe her sweetheart had left without her. Since then, Tizzie has locked her feelings away – except for when it comes to Agnes, her niece who is destined to a life as unpaid help to her oldest brother. History repeating itself, but when Tizzie discovers how Jack stole her future, she vows she’ll not let the same happen to Agnes.
And so a silent and lethal power-struggle begins with Tizzie and Agnes fighting a losing battle against Maggie’s greed. Ms Lindsay does an excellent job of depicting the building tension, the slow tightening of the bonds of future servitude round a desperate ten-year-old girl and her helpless aunt. But Tizzie and Agnes have some allies, and the more Maggie pushes, the more Tizzie realises this is a fight she must win – for Agnes’ sake.
Set in the Yorkshire Dales at the end of the nineteenth century, Tizzie is not only the dark and gritty tale of a woman whose dreams were cruelly crushed by her brother and his wife. It is also a vibrant description of life in the 1880s, period detail inserted with impressive skill in a narrative that flowers into fantastic descriptions of the Dale while never losing pace and a sense of impending doom. This is a harrowing and addictive reading experience in which hope flickers feebly in the dark. But it does flicker, and it is quite impossible to remain unaffected by Tizzie’s determination to ensure her niece will have what she was denied – a life.
Thursday, 17 September 2015
A sensible view of the Kiwi cringe.
This is one of the best views on the problems New Zealand writers have within New Zealand. Cultural cringe is sad and Chris Else does a marvellous job of explaining the whats and whys. Eleanor Catton won last year's Booker Prize and found herself in trouble with the New Zealand Press and general public because she dared to make some mild criticism about certain aspects of the New Zealand literary world.
My thanks to Chris Else for this sensible and very clear explanation of soemthing which has puzzled a lot of New Zealand writers.
Novelist Chris Else reflects on “the Eleanor Catton affair”
The article originally appeared in the most recent volume of New Zealand Books, a quarterly publication dedicated to reviewing New Zealand literature. It was then reproduced in the Book Council's newsletter.
Poppy lopping and cultural cringeing
Among the matters raised by the Eleanor Catton affair, two seem to have been given short shrift: our treatment of our tall poppies and whether or not we suffer from cultural cringe. The Dominion Post editorial for 30th January 2015 denied the existence of a tall poppy syndrome: “New Zealanders are kind, sometimes excessively so, to their achievers. Keri Hulme says she got enormous support when she won the Booker, and this is the usual pattern.” In a similar vein, the New Zealand Listener editorial for 7th February 2015 came close to denying the existence of a cultural cringe:
It is simply not true to say that we don’t embrace our literary successes. The Listener has always championed excellent writing; in fact, we put Catton on the cover before her Booker win. By contrast, sports stars almost never make our cover.
These claims are no doubt true; however, they are also beside the point. We laud our successful people; we also sometimes cut them down. The grosser form of the cultural cringe may be on the retreat, but there is a subtler, more insidious form that is as deeply ingrained as racism or sexism. The tall poppy syndrome is its inevitable consequence.
We should distinguish poppy lopping from two other situations in which writers and artists get dissed. The first is elitism, where the insiders of a group or clique sense that an outsider is making claim to membership and move to protect their territory. The second is professional envy, where one insider sees the success of another as undeserved and lashes out in vituperation. In both cases, the criticism is ostensibly levelled at the work, and it is often difficult to separate the prejudice from a strongly expressed but nonetheless honest judgement. By contrast, the tall poppy syndrome is an attack by an outsider on an insider, and it is directed not at the work but at the person.
A tall poppy is someone who achieves notable and possibly international success in a particular endeavour, be it sport or art or literature or music or even business and, as a result, becomes a celebrity. She (or he) is lauded and lionised. Her fans are proud of her; they are kind to her; they can’t get enough of her and, if she isn’t careful, she’ll be so busy making public appearances and giving her opinion on everything from climate change to her favourite footballer that she won’t have time to pursue her career. She becomes a hero, although I think a more accurate word for the role is “champion”.
The concept of a champion has evolved over the years, but it still retains elements of its origin. In biblical times, the fates of nations were decided in battles between individuals. When David fought Goliath, he did not just represent the people of Israel, he embodied them; and when he slew his opponent, the whole army of the Philistines was thereby defeated, despite their numerical superiority over the Jews. This is a tribal arrangement. The champion fights on behalf of the tribe, and the tribe identifies itself with its champion. If the champion wins, the whole tribe shares in the victory and triumphs through it. If the champion loses, the tribe falls apart and retreats in disorder. Psychologically, it ceases to exist until it can recover and regroup and re-establish itself.
Sports people understand this role; they explicitly represent their tribe, be it country or province or ethnic group. Writers, artists and musicians are often taken by surprise. One day they are doing their thing and the next they are a national representative. What they don’t appreciate is that you don’t choose to be a champion, the tribe chooses you whether you like it or not and, having chosen you, it then expects you to behave as a champion should.
In the case of the Kiwi tribe, the champion’s responsibilities are reinforced by what might be considered the national temperament. She (or he) must be modest, even humble. She must not be seen to be greedy or mercenary or selfish. She can be proud of her achievements to the precise degree that she is proud of her country and proud to be its representative. A triumphant Valerie Adams wrapped in the New Zealand flag or Edmund Hillary saying “We knocked the bastard off” are the paradigms.
Catton’s mistake was not that she called the government a bunch of neo-liberals who don’t care about culture. She had already done that implicitly by coming out publicly as a Green supporter in the general election. Nor was the reaction to her remarks in Jaipur an attempt by the right wing to deprive her of her right to free speech, as some people have suggested. There were two reasons she was attacked by the slavering wolf of talkback radio: firstly, she spoke outside the tribe to people from a foreign country; secondly, and perhaps more importantly, she explicitly distanced herself from the role of tribal champion by saying that she was uncomfortable being New Zealand’s “ambassador”. She was “a traitor” and “ungrateful” because she denied what the tribe considered its rightful share in her achievement; she thereby threatened its sense of identity.
Such reactions aren’t peculiar to New Zealand or even to nations. One of the best examples is the way in which members of the international protest generation turned on Bob Dylan when he abandoned his acoustic guitar and took his music in a new direction. Dylan, too, was “a traitor” and “ungrateful” – he was famously called “Judas” by a fan at the Manchester concert of his 1965-66 tour – because he had turned his back on “us” and seemed not to appreciate “our” belief in him.
Champions are valued most when the tribe is up against it or when a group feels small and insecure. In this lies the connection between our tall poppies and the cultural cringe. Our pride in the Cattons and the Lordes is a measure both of the things we value in our culture and the extent to which we feel the rest of the world is better than we are at such things. Our champions both exemplify our values and point to our vulnerabilities.
The Listener editorial was right when it said that it is not an example of cultural cringe to ask whether our literature is inferior. It is, however, cultural cringe to assume such inferiority without having read the work in question or to believe that international acclaim or success, of itself, guarantees superiority. The cringe is a prejudice and, like all prejudice, its effects are subtle and pervasive. It influences the reading public; the organisers of literary festivals; booksellers in their choice of what to purchase and where to display it; book page editors deciding what should be reviewed, by whom and in how many words; reviewers and book bloggers in their expectations of a book and the subtle pressures that govern how it might be criticised and in what terms.
A platitude favoured by our politicians and arts bureaucrats is that our writers are vitally important because they are “telling our stories”. According to the Listener editorial, New Zealand fiction comprises about 3% of fiction bought here. One conclusion we could draw from this is that the received wisdom is wrong: New Zealand writers are out of touch and are telling someone else’s stories – whose, it is hard to say. Another might be that New Zealand readers aren’t interested in our stories. This, presumably, implies that we have no cultural identity of our own, but have fallen victim to some neo-colonialist con that leads us to believe we are part of a global culture dominated by America. The case of The Luminaries suggests this isn’t so. Here is a novel based on a couple of intellectual conceits, a literary tour de force that reportedly sold over 100,000 copies in the local market in a year. Its success suggests that we are indeed eager for our stories, but only in so far as the world out there approves of them first. Twenty or so years ago, this was not the case. In the 1990s, novels such as Once Were Warriors and The Vintner’s Luck and, to a lesser extent, The Warrior Queen and In a Fishbone Church, achieved strong local sales before they gained any international success. These days, our literature has apparently become invisible to the wider reading public, and few people are interested in seeking it out. The cultural cringe, it seems, is alive and well.
Chris Else is a New Zealand writer who is also a literary agent, technical writing consultant and who runs, with his wife, a manuscript assessment service.
My thanks to Chris Else for this sensible and very clear explanation of soemthing which has puzzled a lot of New Zealand writers.
Novelist Chris Else reflects on “the Eleanor Catton affair”
The article originally appeared in the most recent volume of New Zealand Books, a quarterly publication dedicated to reviewing New Zealand literature. It was then reproduced in the Book Council's newsletter.
Poppy lopping and cultural cringeing
Among the matters raised by the Eleanor Catton affair, two seem to have been given short shrift: our treatment of our tall poppies and whether or not we suffer from cultural cringe. The Dominion Post editorial for 30th January 2015 denied the existence of a tall poppy syndrome: “New Zealanders are kind, sometimes excessively so, to their achievers. Keri Hulme says she got enormous support when she won the Booker, and this is the usual pattern.” In a similar vein, the New Zealand Listener editorial for 7th February 2015 came close to denying the existence of a cultural cringe:
It is simply not true to say that we don’t embrace our literary successes. The Listener has always championed excellent writing; in fact, we put Catton on the cover before her Booker win. By contrast, sports stars almost never make our cover.
These claims are no doubt true; however, they are also beside the point. We laud our successful people; we also sometimes cut them down. The grosser form of the cultural cringe may be on the retreat, but there is a subtler, more insidious form that is as deeply ingrained as racism or sexism. The tall poppy syndrome is its inevitable consequence.
We should distinguish poppy lopping from two other situations in which writers and artists get dissed. The first is elitism, where the insiders of a group or clique sense that an outsider is making claim to membership and move to protect their territory. The second is professional envy, where one insider sees the success of another as undeserved and lashes out in vituperation. In both cases, the criticism is ostensibly levelled at the work, and it is often difficult to separate the prejudice from a strongly expressed but nonetheless honest judgement. By contrast, the tall poppy syndrome is an attack by an outsider on an insider, and it is directed not at the work but at the person.
A tall poppy is someone who achieves notable and possibly international success in a particular endeavour, be it sport or art or literature or music or even business and, as a result, becomes a celebrity. She (or he) is lauded and lionised. Her fans are proud of her; they are kind to her; they can’t get enough of her and, if she isn’t careful, she’ll be so busy making public appearances and giving her opinion on everything from climate change to her favourite footballer that she won’t have time to pursue her career. She becomes a hero, although I think a more accurate word for the role is “champion”.
The concept of a champion has evolved over the years, but it still retains elements of its origin. In biblical times, the fates of nations were decided in battles between individuals. When David fought Goliath, he did not just represent the people of Israel, he embodied them; and when he slew his opponent, the whole army of the Philistines was thereby defeated, despite their numerical superiority over the Jews. This is a tribal arrangement. The champion fights on behalf of the tribe, and the tribe identifies itself with its champion. If the champion wins, the whole tribe shares in the victory and triumphs through it. If the champion loses, the tribe falls apart and retreats in disorder. Psychologically, it ceases to exist until it can recover and regroup and re-establish itself.
Sports people understand this role; they explicitly represent their tribe, be it country or province or ethnic group. Writers, artists and musicians are often taken by surprise. One day they are doing their thing and the next they are a national representative. What they don’t appreciate is that you don’t choose to be a champion, the tribe chooses you whether you like it or not and, having chosen you, it then expects you to behave as a champion should.
In the case of the Kiwi tribe, the champion’s responsibilities are reinforced by what might be considered the national temperament. She (or he) must be modest, even humble. She must not be seen to be greedy or mercenary or selfish. She can be proud of her achievements to the precise degree that she is proud of her country and proud to be its representative. A triumphant Valerie Adams wrapped in the New Zealand flag or Edmund Hillary saying “We knocked the bastard off” are the paradigms.
Catton’s mistake was not that she called the government a bunch of neo-liberals who don’t care about culture. She had already done that implicitly by coming out publicly as a Green supporter in the general election. Nor was the reaction to her remarks in Jaipur an attempt by the right wing to deprive her of her right to free speech, as some people have suggested. There were two reasons she was attacked by the slavering wolf of talkback radio: firstly, she spoke outside the tribe to people from a foreign country; secondly, and perhaps more importantly, she explicitly distanced herself from the role of tribal champion by saying that she was uncomfortable being New Zealand’s “ambassador”. She was “a traitor” and “ungrateful” because she denied what the tribe considered its rightful share in her achievement; she thereby threatened its sense of identity.
Such reactions aren’t peculiar to New Zealand or even to nations. One of the best examples is the way in which members of the international protest generation turned on Bob Dylan when he abandoned his acoustic guitar and took his music in a new direction. Dylan, too, was “a traitor” and “ungrateful” – he was famously called “Judas” by a fan at the Manchester concert of his 1965-66 tour – because he had turned his back on “us” and seemed not to appreciate “our” belief in him.
Champions are valued most when the tribe is up against it or when a group feels small and insecure. In this lies the connection between our tall poppies and the cultural cringe. Our pride in the Cattons and the Lordes is a measure both of the things we value in our culture and the extent to which we feel the rest of the world is better than we are at such things. Our champions both exemplify our values and point to our vulnerabilities.
The Listener editorial was right when it said that it is not an example of cultural cringe to ask whether our literature is inferior. It is, however, cultural cringe to assume such inferiority without having read the work in question or to believe that international acclaim or success, of itself, guarantees superiority. The cringe is a prejudice and, like all prejudice, its effects are subtle and pervasive. It influences the reading public; the organisers of literary festivals; booksellers in their choice of what to purchase and where to display it; book page editors deciding what should be reviewed, by whom and in how many words; reviewers and book bloggers in their expectations of a book and the subtle pressures that govern how it might be criticised and in what terms.
A platitude favoured by our politicians and arts bureaucrats is that our writers are vitally important because they are “telling our stories”. According to the Listener editorial, New Zealand fiction comprises about 3% of fiction bought here. One conclusion we could draw from this is that the received wisdom is wrong: New Zealand writers are out of touch and are telling someone else’s stories – whose, it is hard to say. Another might be that New Zealand readers aren’t interested in our stories. This, presumably, implies that we have no cultural identity of our own, but have fallen victim to some neo-colonialist con that leads us to believe we are part of a global culture dominated by America. The case of The Luminaries suggests this isn’t so. Here is a novel based on a couple of intellectual conceits, a literary tour de force that reportedly sold over 100,000 copies in the local market in a year. Its success suggests that we are indeed eager for our stories, but only in so far as the world out there approves of them first. Twenty or so years ago, this was not the case. In the 1990s, novels such as Once Were Warriors and The Vintner’s Luck and, to a lesser extent, The Warrior Queen and In a Fishbone Church, achieved strong local sales before they gained any international success. These days, our literature has apparently become invisible to the wider reading public, and few people are interested in seeking it out. The cultural cringe, it seems, is alive and well.
Chris Else is a New Zealand writer who is also a literary agent, technical writing consultant and who runs, with his wife, a manuscript assessment service.
Listen to the researchers who know: Independent E-Book Sales are growing.
Independent Writers owe a great deal to the team at author earnings.com. When the publishing industry is busy talking down e-books and e-book sales, telling us they have plateaued or are even dropping, here is the truth from solid research.
Take a look.
http://authorearnings.com/report/september-2015-author-earnings-report/?utm_source=Author+Earnings+Updates&utm_campaign=d11d97a618-September_2015_Author_Earnings_Report9_5_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2438cb1801-d11d97a618-128100545
Seems to me e-book sales are still strong and the research only covers amazon sales!
For those of you in a hurry here is the meat of their latest research:
During that same period in 2015, Amazon’s overall ebook sales have continued to grow in both unit and dollar terms, fueled by a strong shift in consumer ebook purchasing behavior away from traditionally-published ebooks and toward indie-published- and Amazon-imprint-published ebooks.
These “non-traditionally-published” books now make up nearly 60% of all Kindle ebooks purchased in the US, and take in 40% of all consumer dollars spent on those ebooks.
Traditional publishers and publishing industry pundits are claiming that the broader US ebook market has now flattened, or is even shrinking.
But at the same time, the largest ebook store in world is telling the Wall Street Journal that the exact opposite is happening:
“Amazon says e-book sales in its Kindle store—which encompasses a host of titles that aren’t published by the five major houses—are up in 2015 in both units and revenue.”
So which is it?
Indie ebooks without ISBNs have grown from 30% of all Kindle ebooks purchased in January 2015 to now account for 37% of all Kindle ebooks being purchased in September.
When indie ebooks that do have ISBNs are included, then indie self-published books, which made up 36% of all Kindle ebooks purchased in February 2014, now make up 42% of all Kindle ebooks being purchased on Amazon right now.
Unfortunately, we didn’t also go back and retroactively check each book in the 4 earlier 2014 datasets to see which of them had ISBNs. Had we done so, it would have beautifully charted the rapid rise of the untracked ebook “shadow industry,” right alongside the rapid decline in market share held by traditionally-published ebooks.
But right now, as of September 2015:
“Nontraditionally-published” ebooks from indie self-publishers and Amazon publishing imprints make up 58% of all Kindle ebooks purchased in the US.
Traditionally-published ebooks make up 42% of Kindle ebooks purchased in the US.
When the AAP reports “declining ebook sales”, they are describing the shrinking portion of the US ebook market held by their 1200 participating traditional publishers, whose share of the broader US ebook market has fallen in the last 18 months from 46% of all Kindle ebook purchases to less than 32%.
This dramatic market share shift has not gone entirely unnoticed in traditional-publishing circles. In July, influential industry veteran Mike Shatzkin observed that:
“Ebook sales for big publishers may be declining but they’re being replaced by indie sales at lower prices (their USP) at Amazon.”
Way to go Indies!
And thank you guys for your research.
Take a look.
http://authorearnings.com/report/september-2015-author-earnings-report/?utm_source=Author+Earnings+Updates&utm_campaign=d11d97a618-September_2015_Author_Earnings_Report9_5_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2438cb1801-d11d97a618-128100545
Seems to me e-book sales are still strong and the research only covers amazon sales!
For those of you in a hurry here is the meat of their latest research:
During that same period in 2015, Amazon’s overall ebook sales have continued to grow in both unit and dollar terms, fueled by a strong shift in consumer ebook purchasing behavior away from traditionally-published ebooks and toward indie-published- and Amazon-imprint-published ebooks.
These “non-traditionally-published” books now make up nearly 60% of all Kindle ebooks purchased in the US, and take in 40% of all consumer dollars spent on those ebooks.
Traditional publishers and publishing industry pundits are claiming that the broader US ebook market has now flattened, or is even shrinking.
But at the same time, the largest ebook store in world is telling the Wall Street Journal that the exact opposite is happening:
“Amazon says e-book sales in its Kindle store—which encompasses a host of titles that aren’t published by the five major houses—are up in 2015 in both units and revenue.”
So which is it?
Indie ebooks without ISBNs have grown from 30% of all Kindle ebooks purchased in January 2015 to now account for 37% of all Kindle ebooks being purchased in September.
When indie ebooks that do have ISBNs are included, then indie self-published books, which made up 36% of all Kindle ebooks purchased in February 2014, now make up 42% of all Kindle ebooks being purchased on Amazon right now.
Unfortunately, we didn’t also go back and retroactively check each book in the 4 earlier 2014 datasets to see which of them had ISBNs. Had we done so, it would have beautifully charted the rapid rise of the untracked ebook “shadow industry,” right alongside the rapid decline in market share held by traditionally-published ebooks.
But right now, as of September 2015:
“Nontraditionally-published” ebooks from indie self-publishers and Amazon publishing imprints make up 58% of all Kindle ebooks purchased in the US.
Traditionally-published ebooks make up 42% of Kindle ebooks purchased in the US.
When the AAP reports “declining ebook sales”, they are describing the shrinking portion of the US ebook market held by their 1200 participating traditional publishers, whose share of the broader US ebook market has fallen in the last 18 months from 46% of all Kindle ebook purchases to less than 32%.
This dramatic market share shift has not gone entirely unnoticed in traditional-publishing circles. In July, influential industry veteran Mike Shatzkin observed that:
“Ebook sales for big publishers may be declining but they’re being replaced by indie sales at lower prices (their USP) at Amazon.”
Way to go Indies!
And thank you guys for your research.
Friday, 31 July 2015
More Tips from the Helpful
I love all the advice from Shawn and RJ but I want to know why when I do all these things I still cannot get one person to sign up for my email newsletter which goes out (or will when I have readers!) once a year!!!!!!
Seems to me there is a magic wand involved and something else which no one can name but the lucky ones have.
Well I will persist in my efforts but I do wonder.
Here are the tips for gaining a list of readers and a hint about why we all need beta readers.
Shawn & R.J. from Book Marketing Tools
http://bookmarketingtools.com
We all know the story: you write a book, find an agent, get rejected, get signed with a publisher, excitement! Joy! Then they ask, "Send us all of the people in your audience, so we can get the word out." Some publishers won't even give you a book deal unless you already have a built-in audience. That is what has made self-publishing so appealing for many authors. But, the need for an audience is still there, no matter which publishing path you take.
We here at Book Marketing Tools have told you... "Build a list..." But we say now, "Build an audience and own that audience."
There are subtle, but major differences between those two approaches...
A list is just a group of people represented by emails.
An audience are those same people, but who get engaged and who are highly interested in you and your books.
---
A list can be passive with little conversation between you and them, usually in one direction (from you to them).
An audience is the group of people who you are highly engaged with, those you talk with and those that talk back.
---
A list is numbers.
An audience is real people.
--
The reason you should build and own an audience over just building a list is because those who own audiences have more leverage and have the ability to sell books at will.
I said that right, "sell books at will!"
Think of brands and people that own their audience: Apple, Oprah, Coke, Zappos, Stephen King, Amazon, etc. when they sell their latest widget, book, product, or service it's not a question of who will buy, but how much... They are selling at will.
Ok, so you've learned how to build a list, but how do you build and own an audience, so you can sell at will...
Here are some basic tips to help you get started:
• get your list more engaged by asking for their input. At BMT we have begun to do this by regularly asking our audience / list what they think about things. This one act has created a stronger audience than when we first started just building a list.
• ask your list to be part of what you are doing for project and books. I was shocked to see the response when we did this at BMT. Every 6 months we ask all those that have been on our list for at least 6 months to be part of our guest blogging program, this has allowed our list to contribute to our growing blog and it has given them visibility among their peers.
How can you do the same?
We'd love to hear what you think would be good ways to get your list engaged with you, contributing ideas and feedback in your business, with your books, etc.
BETA READERS?
Believe me, we know all too well how hard it can be to share your work. You created these vulnerable characters; you built this fantasy world. What if the readers don’t like it? What if they do? What if they think you are terrible/amazing/stupid/mediocre? As long as your story remains tucked away in the confines of your laptop, it is safe.
But surely that misses the point of writing. We write because we have something to say. We believed in our ideas enough to spend all that time writing and editing; now we need to believe in them enough to share them with others.
A good first step for a lot of writers is to find a community of beta readers. These are real people from around the world who love reading and love giving feedback to writers. They are not professional proofreaders or editors; rather, they relish in setting their eyes on fresh writing and being the first to find the gems.
There are a number of online communities that exist to help writers find beta readers, including Wattpad and Scribophile. We also like a new app called Penned, which allows you to read and share stories right from your phone.
So go on. Be brave. Put it out there and see what happens!
Seems to me there is a magic wand involved and something else which no one can name but the lucky ones have.
Well I will persist in my efforts but I do wonder.
Here are the tips for gaining a list of readers and a hint about why we all need beta readers.
Shawn & R.J. from Book Marketing Tools
http://bookmarketingtools.com
We all know the story: you write a book, find an agent, get rejected, get signed with a publisher, excitement! Joy! Then they ask, "Send us all of the people in your audience, so we can get the word out." Some publishers won't even give you a book deal unless you already have a built-in audience. That is what has made self-publishing so appealing for many authors. But, the need for an audience is still there, no matter which publishing path you take.
We here at Book Marketing Tools have told you... "Build a list..." But we say now, "Build an audience and own that audience."
There are subtle, but major differences between those two approaches...
A list is just a group of people represented by emails.
An audience are those same people, but who get engaged and who are highly interested in you and your books.
---
A list can be passive with little conversation between you and them, usually in one direction (from you to them).
An audience is the group of people who you are highly engaged with, those you talk with and those that talk back.
---
A list is numbers.
An audience is real people.
--
The reason you should build and own an audience over just building a list is because those who own audiences have more leverage and have the ability to sell books at will.
I said that right, "sell books at will!"
Think of brands and people that own their audience: Apple, Oprah, Coke, Zappos, Stephen King, Amazon, etc. when they sell their latest widget, book, product, or service it's not a question of who will buy, but how much... They are selling at will.
Ok, so you've learned how to build a list, but how do you build and own an audience, so you can sell at will...
Here are some basic tips to help you get started:
• get your list more engaged by asking for their input. At BMT we have begun to do this by regularly asking our audience / list what they think about things. This one act has created a stronger audience than when we first started just building a list.
• ask your list to be part of what you are doing for project and books. I was shocked to see the response when we did this at BMT. Every 6 months we ask all those that have been on our list for at least 6 months to be part of our guest blogging program, this has allowed our list to contribute to our growing blog and it has given them visibility among their peers.
How can you do the same?
We'd love to hear what you think would be good ways to get your list engaged with you, contributing ideas and feedback in your business, with your books, etc.
BETA READERS?
Believe me, we know all too well how hard it can be to share your work. You created these vulnerable characters; you built this fantasy world. What if the readers don’t like it? What if they do? What if they think you are terrible/amazing/stupid/mediocre? As long as your story remains tucked away in the confines of your laptop, it is safe.
But surely that misses the point of writing. We write because we have something to say. We believed in our ideas enough to spend all that time writing and editing; now we need to believe in them enough to share them with others.
A good first step for a lot of writers is to find a community of beta readers. These are real people from around the world who love reading and love giving feedback to writers. They are not professional proofreaders or editors; rather, they relish in setting their eyes on fresh writing and being the first to find the gems.
There are a number of online communities that exist to help writers find beta readers, including Wattpad and Scribophile. We also like a new app called Penned, which allows you to read and share stories right from your phone.
So go on. Be brave. Put it out there and see what happens!
Thursday, 9 July 2015
If only...
I have been enjoying the brilliance, clarity and sheer genius of Dr Philip Ball. The Doctor is 'a freelance science writer, broadcaster and lecturer who's particularly interested in the interactions of the sciences, the arts, and the wider culture.' That sounds somewhat abstruse. In fact Ball makes it all so fascinating I'm in despair.
In May he was one of the guests invited to New Zealand for the Auckland Writers Festival. He gave two talks - the first 'Bright Earth: the Invention of Colour' was recorded at Te Papa in Wellington. The second ‘Invisibility: A Cultural History’ was recorded at St Margaret’s College in Christchurch and both were gobsmackingly brilliant and utterly depressed me. He is one of those incredible people who can link unlikely things and make connections which pull parts together and give the listener a great Eureka moment.
I'm hoping to buy his latest book: 'Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Colour', published by the University of Chicago Press, ISBN: 9780226036281. I learnt so much not only about colour and art but about people, history and chemistry. But it was his talk, ‘Invisibility: A Cultural History’ which has had me going back to Radio New Zealand to listen and I still haven't got half of it sorted in my head.
What I wonder about is where Dr Philip Ball got the ideas and how he could see that they stretched across all the things he linked so sensibly? This kind of intelligence and ability to see beyond surfaces and basic ideas stuns me. I do not feel capable of doing this myself and know that I need to do it in order to write the things I want to write. Hence the depression and frustration as the novel refuses to make sense and won't go where it ought to in order for me to finish it. Listening to the talks simply leaves me feeling perhaps I should not waste my time trying to write because I won't be able to write anything worth much anyway.
This is mid-novel blues and time to call on the strength of my colleagues in Writer's Choice and get mutual support, sympathetic groans and some bracing advice. It seems to me that writers on their own need to make sure they have a support system for those agonising days, weeks and even months. I wonder what Dr Philip Ball could make of this creative depression and what he might connect it to. I would love to know in the hope of preventing the dread depression next time I hit the mid-novel blues.
In May he was one of the guests invited to New Zealand for the Auckland Writers Festival. He gave two talks - the first 'Bright Earth: the Invention of Colour' was recorded at Te Papa in Wellington. The second ‘Invisibility: A Cultural History’ was recorded at St Margaret’s College in Christchurch and both were gobsmackingly brilliant and utterly depressed me. He is one of those incredible people who can link unlikely things and make connections which pull parts together and give the listener a great Eureka moment.
I'm hoping to buy his latest book: 'Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Colour', published by the University of Chicago Press, ISBN: 9780226036281. I learnt so much not only about colour and art but about people, history and chemistry. But it was his talk, ‘Invisibility: A Cultural History’ which has had me going back to Radio New Zealand to listen and I still haven't got half of it sorted in my head.
What I wonder about is where Dr Philip Ball got the ideas and how he could see that they stretched across all the things he linked so sensibly? This kind of intelligence and ability to see beyond surfaces and basic ideas stuns me. I do not feel capable of doing this myself and know that I need to do it in order to write the things I want to write. Hence the depression and frustration as the novel refuses to make sense and won't go where it ought to in order for me to finish it. Listening to the talks simply leaves me feeling perhaps I should not waste my time trying to write because I won't be able to write anything worth much anyway.
This is mid-novel blues and time to call on the strength of my colleagues in Writer's Choice and get mutual support, sympathetic groans and some bracing advice. It seems to me that writers on their own need to make sure they have a support system for those agonising days, weeks and even months. I wonder what Dr Philip Ball could make of this creative depression and what he might connect it to. I would love to know in the hope of preventing the dread depression next time I hit the mid-novel blues.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)