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Good books for Writers
DIGITAL MARKETING( CONT’ D)
I said,“ yes”. He said,“ wow.”)
One informed estimate I heard is that Amazon constitutes upwards of 95 percent of online print sales. Kindle has outrun its ebook competition, gaining share consistently from Apple’ s iBooks, B & N’ s Nook, and Kobo and Google. Amazon probably has an ebook share in the mid-60s for most publishers. However, with the ebooks they control and keep off other platforms— Amazon Publishing and many of their top indie authors— and with additional impetus compared to the other vendors from their subscription business, their overall ebook market share is perhaps 10 or more points higher than that.
That anecdata is supported by a December 29 Wall Street Journal story that says that only a diminishing minority of Americans does not shop at Amazon!
When I went fulltime into the business in the 1970s, publishers were concerned because Walden and Dalton combined threatened to become 20 percent of the business between them.
But even percentages as large as what Amazon owns and what share ebooks get are worthy of closer and more granular examination. It is always worth remembering that the 6-foot tall man drowns walking across a river that is an average of 3-feet deep. Using aggregated averages is an engraved invitation to mistaken analysis.
So my expectation this year is that the most important information DBW is going to have to deliver will come from Data Guy, Hugh Howey’ s collaborator on the Author Earnings website, whom Michael Cader and I introduced to the DBW audience last year.( We put Hugh Howey on the DBW stage when“ Wool” became an Amazon bestseller many years ago.)
Data Guy has broadened his remit, which was originally about understanding ebook sales, by joining forces with Nielsen Bookscan. That enables him to analyze print, audio, and digital sales through online and physical store channels, and to look at the books both by source( indies, Amazon-published, and“ traditional”) and by genre. DBW has published a mini White Paper, available now, that tips to a lot of this information. It is particularly readable and informative with an introduction by Porter Anderson.
The Data Guy analysis will certainly produce some Amazon-centric insight. But considering their mushrooming importance to everybody in the book world, that’ s a subject about which we can’ t get enough information. At least there will be ample opportunity to talk about Amazon and how different publishers are looking at them with the other attendees. I suspect there will be a lot of such conversation. At least I’ ll be having some!
WINTER 2017
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WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE