Are you ready to strike it rich with ebooks? Sorry, you’ve come to the wrong post. The world of pork belly futures and other commodity speculation is best left to those deep-pocketed captains of industry who think they can catch the scent of market trends like a sniffer dog can hone in on the illicit powder in that suitcase coming down the cargo ramp.
But, clearly something is going on in the ebook realm to make publishers, authors, book distributors, and others whose living involves the written word sit up and take notice. What can we make of it?
A few facts and figures give some insight into the changing publishing landscape.
ZDNet notes that eBook Sales Trending Up. The article points to Adam Dewitz’s Print CEO blog with more facts and figures, including the inevitable forecast:
Evidence showing a upward spiral in eBook usage continues to be reported. Forrester has published a five-year forecast for eBooks in the US. According to Forrester: 2010 will end with $966 million in eBooks sold to consumers and they forecast the industry will nearly triple to almost $3 billion by 2015
E-reader sales are strong, too, as shown in this article from SFGate:
Amazon sold about 7.1 million Kindle e-readers last year, Barclays analyst Doug Anmuth estimates today in a note, and will sell 12.3 million this year. (“Though our numbers may still be conservative.”)
Kindle sales (devices and content) will reach $3.3 billion this year, almost 8% of Amazon’s revenue, Anmuth estimates, and more than $7 billion in 2013, representing 11% of Amazon’s revenue.
Established authors benefitted from the momentum. For example, Nora Roberts surpassed 1 million Kindle sales (more precisely, 1,170,539 by 11 JAN 11). With this milestone, she joined the ranks of another living author, James Patterson, and one whose estate will benefit, Steig Larsson, as members of the Kindle Million Club.
The big boys, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, are clearly riding the ebook wave. Barnes & Noble joined Amazon in announcing that they now sell more digital books than physical books through their online store. And, their e-readers are also spurring strong sales, as reported by Mashable:
Hot on the heels of Amazon’s announcement that the Kindle 3 is its bestselling product in history, Barnes & Noble is reporting today that its line of Nook e-readers are also hot items — the biggest sellers in the retailer’s 40-year lifespan.
The new NOOKColor, apparently, is a particularly popular seller, as B&N says that it was the number-one selling gift of the holiday season.
Established authors are beginning to abandon traditional publishing houses and sell direct, as noted by Michael Ashley in The Huffington Post:
Seth Godin, a best-selling author who has been in the publishing industry for more than two decades, announced this past summer that he was dropping his publishing house and instead planned to sell his future books directly to his audience. He later announced his newest publishing vision with Amazon, the Domino Project, which will change many of the rules traditionally tied with publishing trade non-fiction. In a recent blog post, Godin writes about getting rid of what he calls the “middleman,” also known as bookstores, which have a limited amount of shelf space.
Indie authors and independent publishers are finding new ways to get their voices heard, as Emily Hill relates in this Independent Publisher article:
My library soon expanded with titles like “Publishing for Dummies,” and my time in front of eHow and Askville increased. I read blogs, networked and began penciling out a sequence of what one needed to know in order to independently publish. I kept folders, met vendors, and slowly the vision of being not only an author, but also a publisher began to take shape. I joined independent publishers’ associations and followed the message boards of small press and indie-authors. I knew that my future was in independent publishing. I methodically built a one-step-at-a-time process for independent publishing, from writing, to copyright, editing, and marketing. I studied eCommerce, ePublishing, and print on demand print options. My file folders grew to include information on BookBrewer, BAMM, royalty agreements, and formatting sell sheets.
Emily Hill now has a novel out, Jenkins: Confederate Blockade Runner, for the Nook and Kindle, as well as a book on self publishing.
So, maybe this is the year of the ebook. Or, maybe that title will apply more accurately next year. In the meantime, these are interesting times for nimble publishers and intrepid authors. There are abundant opportunities for those who navigate the market possibilities like sailors, sensitive to the shifting variations in the wind direction, adjusting when the wind vane on top the mast shows change. The publishing behemoths, as is their nature, will pick a point on the horizon and steer their massive freighters toward that point and hope that market prognostications and predictions serve them well. The rest of us will wet our thumbs, raise them to the wind, and sharpen our intuitions as we follow the developments in epublishing.
May the wind fill your sails this year and inspire your epublishing ventures. We’ll be here to offer the perspectives and insights that might help to guide your journey.
