From Digital Book World:

A high-priced, new-release is again atop the ebook best-seller list. Dan Brown’s Inferno (Random House), a new release from the best-selling author of The Da Vinci Code, is selling more ebooks than any other title at $14.99, competing with $0.99 self-published ebooks and $4.99 classics.

While the No. 1 ebook on the best-seller list fits a familiar narrative when it comes to how book sales have been until very recently, the rest of the list follows a new paradigm. Five titles out of the top-25 are self-published. An American classic is at No. 2 at $4.99, coinciding with a movie release. And, perhaps most astounding of all, the average price of a best-selling ebook this week is $7.04, down slightly from last week’s average of $7.23, and up slightly from the all-time low of $6.58 from a few weeks ago.

The $7.00 price tag for a best-selling ebook doesn’t seem all that out of place these days but it’s just over half of what the average price for a best-selling ebook was a year ago.

. . . .

More important than the why for publishers is what does it mean for their businesses. One problem that low ebook prices present for publishers is that they create an unfavorable comparison with hardcover prices.

Link to the rest, including the ebook bestseller list, at Digital Book World

Passive Guy will note that, while Amazon has many bestseller lists, it does not release sales figures for ebooks. While the Digital Book World ebook bestseller information is useful and interesting, it lacks direct access to Amazon data.

From Digital Book World:

Last week self-published authors stunned the publishing world by taking the Nos. 1 and 2 spots on the DBW Ebook Best-Seller list.

This week, David Baldacci’s The Hit (Hachette) is No. 1, ending the reign of Holly Ward’s Damaged; however, this week, Ward brought friends. Five of the top ten best-selling ebook titles this week were self-published, three of them at $0.99 and one of them by a bankable big-six author gone hybrid.

. . . .

Authors like Freethy have been joined by authors like Ward to make a new class of power-players in publishing: hybrid authors. They publish with traditional publishers when they want to, self-publish when they choose and run their careers like businesses. It might be merely interesting to publishers, retailers and everyone in between if these authors weren’t starting to dominate best-seller lists; it’s more than interesting now — it’s material.

Link to the rest at Digital Book World and thanks to becca for the tip.

From Jeremy Greenfield on Forbes Blogs:

Unlike the other self-published authors to hit No. 1 this year — Jennifer Armentrout and Rachel Van Dyken — [Holly] Ward, who writes under the name H.M. Ward as well as Ella Steele, never published a book with a traditional publisher. She never gained the experience of what it takes to bring a book to market and make it successful from a secondary source — she’s self-taught.

Early on in her short writing career, Ward was in the early stages of working with a publisher for her first title, Demon Kissed (March 2011) but pulled out before the book was published.

“I have kind of a control freak personality and I didn’t think it was a good match so I backed away from that [working with the publisher] and decided to self-publish,” she said. “I did everything from the cover design to the model shoots to the content. I really like the level of control in everything when you do self-publication.”

. . . .

According to a recent report in the New York Times, quality editorial and marketing efforts keep authors coming back to publishers, but that’s simply not true. While editorial and marketing are factors, they’re nowhere near the top of the list.

According to a study of nearly 5,000 authors Digital Book World published earlier this year, asking them about preferences when publishing among other things, here are the two most important factors, in order, for authors when publishing a book:

1. Reach of distribution
2. Amount of creative control retained (read: exactly what Ward wants)

. . . .

So, the kind of control that Ward wants is actually quite typical for authors and it’s something that self-publishing caters to quite well. This should be disconcerting for traditional publishers, which typically offer a bevy of services and benefits but not control over a manuscript, its packaging and how it’s marketed and sold.

Link to the rest at Forbes Blogs and thanks to Dave for the tip.

One aspect of control that Jeremy didn’t mention is access to real-time sales numbers. With Amazon, Nook, Kobo, etc., an indie author can see what’s going on with each book, including what sort of response various publicity campaigns generate.

Whenever a publisher’s royalty report comes rolling into Casa PG, the difference is stark.

First, it typically looks more like a mainframe print-out from the 1970′s than a professional business report from the 21st century. It’s clear nobody really cares if the author understands it or not.

Second, it’s a summary of six months of sales with no week-by-week or month-by-month breakdown of sales so cause and effect from an author’s promotional efforts is impossible to evaluate.

Third, it’s badly out of date when it arrives, approximately three months after the end of the reporting period.

PG admits that suspicions always arise in his mind that the publisher is screwing around with the numbers. However, the royalty report is not designed to allow the author to double-check the accuracy of anything.

The reports an indie author receives empower the author to manage his/her business. Royalty reports from traditional publishers are one more reminder that the author’s place is out in the cotton fields, not in the mansion house.

From Digital Book World:

Publishing industry professionals worried that the ebook era would precipitate a bevy of $0.99 self-published best-sellers may be seeing their nightmares come true today. The Nos. 1 and 2 best-selling ebooks this week are $0.99 self-published works: Damaged by H.M. Ward and The Bet by Rachel Van Dyken.

For the fourth time in 2013, a self-published ebook is No. 1.

“This is another benchmark moment,” said publishing consultant and DBW partner Mike Shatzkin. “The number of small- and self-published books achieving real commercial success will continue to rise; the gatekeeping role of established publishers will continue — gradually and then, sooner or later, suddenly — to fade to relative irrelevance. What’s the over-under for self-published titles in the top-10 by the end of the year? Three? Six? It surely is higher than two!”

. . . .

Even with the low price, the sales numbers are still eye-popping. The author of Damaged, Holly Ward (who writes under H.M. Ward), told Digital Book World that since the title was released on April 2 it has sold more than 150,000 copies (many of them at $3.99 — she dropped the price last week when she noticed her title climbing the Kindle best-seller list and wanted to see if she could push it to No. 1). In ten days, Van Dyken sold 85,000 copies of The Bet – that was as of early last week and she’s surely sold many more copies since then.

Perhaps more disconcerting for publishers is that unlike Dyken, Ward has never published with a traditional publisher. She has self-published about 25 titles and is now just starting to work with an agent to sell foreign rights and movie rights for her work, New York-based literary agent Jane Dystel who reached out to Ward after her book Scandalous hit No. 32 on the New York Times best-seller list in early Feb.

Link to the rest at Digital Book World

From The Wall Street Journal:

After the success of his first two novels, “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” Khaled Hosseini’s coming book would have been a sure bet to debut at No. 1. Until, that is, Random House decided to publish Dan Brown’s latest thriller the week before.

In one of the biggest literary showdowns of the year, Doubleday is publishing Mr. Brown’s “Inferno” May 14, with a four million hardcover print run for North America. The book features Robert Langdon, the now-familiar fictional Harvard professor that actor Tom Hanks portrayed in the movie versions of two earlier novels by Mr. Brown, “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons.”

A week later, on May 21, Mr. Hosseini’s multigenerational family saga “And the Mountains Echoed” goes on sale.

. . . .

To be sure, the two new books will likely appeal to different audiences. Mr. Brown is one of the country’s biggest thriller writers, while Afghan-born Mr. Hosseini is a gifted storyteller whose two earlier novels introduced readers to a different culture.

“I bet there’s not much crossover,” said literary agent David Gernert, who represents thriller writer John Grisham. Mr. Hosseini will pull literary readers, said Mr. Gernert, while Mr. Brown will attract people looking for what Mr. Gernert described as “pure page-turning entertainment.”

Even so, “There is only one No. 1 slot,” said Cathy Langer, the leader buyer at the retailer Tattered Cover, which has three bookstores in the Denver area.

Publishing veterans say it is Mr. Hosseini who could end up being disappointed, given the bigger print run for “Inferno” and its earlier publication date.

. . . .

While booksellers say they are glad to have new titles from two fan favorites, Ms. Langer at the Tattered Cover sounded a wistful note over the timing.

“We’d have preferred to have them a few weeks apart,” she said. “That way we’d have gotten two swells instead of one.”

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire)

From The Wall Street Journal:

Everybody knows sex sells. Now, in book-publishing circles, it’s a bit clearer exactly how much.

E.L. James’s “Fifty Shades” erotic trilogy sold more than 70 million copies in print, audio and e-book editions in English, German and Spanish from March through December, according to Bertelsmann SE & Co., parent of the books’ publisher Random House. The first of the books was published in the U.S. in March.

Those sales made the books Random House’s fastest-selling series ever, Bertelsmann said in its 2012 annual report. Indeed, the trilogy is one of the one of the fastest-selling books series for any publisher ever, hitting the 20-million sales mark in the U.S. after just four months.

For a sense of scale, Random House’s second biggest selling North American title last year—Gillian Flynn’s thriller “Gone Girl,” which has been a national best-seller for 41 weeks—sold more than two million copies in the U.S. and Canada in all formats, between June and December.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire)

From Digital Book World:

This week, it’s Amazon’s turn to dominate the ebook best-seller charts. It has two titles in the top ten and three in the top twelve, all Hangman’s Daughter books by Oliver Pötzsch.

When Amazon launched its publishing operation in 2011 and 2012 — first in Seattle and then in New York — hopes were high among its early authors and other publishers were scared that the leading book retailer in the world would favor its own titles above theirs and book sales would sag for anyone publishing under another imprint.

Fast-forward to 2013 and those hopes have been somewhat dashed and those fears somewhat dispelled as Amazon has had struggles in the publishing business.

. . . .

However, due to an aggressive pre-sale of the upcoming Pötzsch title The Poisoned Pilgrim: A Hangman’s Daughter Tale, things are looking up. The book doesn’t hit shelves until July but Amazon offered it for $0.99 at the end of last week*, shooting it to No. 1. After a day-long sale, the price was raised to $7.99 and then lowered again to $4.99.

Link to the rest at Digital Book World

From Digital Book World:

Following the huge success of her self-published best-seller Wait for You, hybrid author Jennifer L. Armentrout has signed a three-book, six-figure deal with HarperCollins imprint Avon for Wait for You and two other upcoming books in the series.

Prior to Wait for You, which she published under the pen name J. Lynn, Armentrout had published 13 other books with indie publishers Spencer Hill Press and Entangled Publishing. She currently has upcoming books with Harlequin (end of 2013) and Hyperion (2014).

. . . .

JG: What made you decide to self-publish in the first place? 

JLA: Came up with the idea in the shower and wrote the book in 20 days in January. I can write pretty fast. I sent a partial to my agent and she loved it. She said, “we can definitely sell this.” We targeted about four-to-five publishers and it was really well-received and all the editors loved it but it got turned down at every publisher because the new adult market is very risky. It’s hard to get it into bookstores. And the market is getting flooded. So, we had this book we thought would sell it but couldn’t.

When we found out we couldn’t sell it Kevan and I had a serious conversation – neither of us had done anything with self-publishing before but I knew some authors who had done it and had some help getting copy editors and cover designers and other people to help. We formed a marketing plan that we thought would work. I have a platform but we wanted to reach beyond my readership so that’s when we decided to do the three-day $0.99 deal and it worked.

It has all happened so quickly. I wrote the book in January, we published it in February. It’s been an insane couple of months.

Link to the rest at Digital Book World

From Digital Book World:

For the first time ever, a self-published title has hit No. 1 on the Digital Book World Ebook Best-Seller list, occupying a position once held by Fifty Shades of Grey, Gone Girl and other mega best-selling titles.

The book, Wait for You, is authored and published by Jennifer L. Armentrout under the pen name J. Lynn, which she calls her “alter-ego.” Armentrout has published books with Hyperion, Harlequin and several others in addition to self-publishing; that is, she’s a hybrid author.

Wait for You went on sale Feb. 26 and immediately started inching up the best-seller list. While this week is the first time it’s in our top-25, it barely missed at No. 27 last week and was No. 9 on the $0.00 to $2.99 list. Propelling it to the No. 1 spot was a price promotion executed by Armentrout and without the aid of a retailer promotion like a Kindle Daily Deal. The book was $0.99 for three days last week. It’s now selling for $2.99.

Link to the rest at Digital Book World

From author Soren Kaplan at Leapfrogging:

The other day, I received an unexpected phone call from Jeff Trachtenberg, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal.

. . . .

But it turned out Trachtenberg didn’t want to discuss what was in my book. He was interested in how it had made it onto his paper’s bestseller list. As he accurately noted, Leapfrogging had, well, leapt onto the Journal’s list at #3 the first week it debuted, and then promptly disappeared the following Friday.

. . . .

I was being put on the spot to discuss my role in perhaps one of the most controversial practices in the book publishing industry.

. . . .

Trachtenberg asked me about my experience with a company called ResultSource, the firm I had hired to help me hit the bestseller list from day one. Trachtenberg said he had contacted all of the major New York publishers, but no one would speak to him about the firm or the role of so-called “bestseller campaigns” in helping authors reach the coveted status. No comment. Dead silence.

. . . .

There’s good reason why most industry insiders would prefer that the wider book-buying public didn’t learn about these campaigns. Put bluntly, they allow people with enough money, contacts, and know-how to buy their way onto bestseller lists. And they benefit all the key players of the book world. Publishers profit on them. Authors gain credibility from bestseller status, which can launch consulting or speaking careers and give a big boost to keynote presentation fees. And the marketing firms that run the campaigns don’t do so bad either.

. . . .

In exploring marketing strategies for my book, I had indeed stumbled upon the company that Trachtenberg had asked me about, ResultSource. I learned that this niche marketing firm had apparently cracked the code on how the sales of books are calculated by companies like Nielsen that produce bestseller data – the very data that major trade publications, newspapers, and journals rely on to populate their bestseller lists, just like The Wall Street Journal.

. . . .

I too contracted with ResultSource. The strategy the firm laid out for me was relatively straightforward. I would contact my Fortune 500 clients and others and ask them to preorder copies of my book. If I could obtain bulk orders before Leapfrogging was released, ResultSource would purchase the books on my behalf using their tried-and-true formula. Three thousand books sold would get me on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list. Eleven thousand would secure a spot on the biggest prize of them all, The New York Times list.

. . . .

It took effort, but in the end I was able to secure enough client orders, along with my own purchases to resell at conferences, to make it onto The Wall Street Journal’s bestseller list.

. . . .

What was happening here? Had I just uncovered the underworld of the publishing industry, a secret society that knows how to manufacture knowledge, fame, and careers? Was it really true that the practice had become standard operating procedure? If this was how everyone was doing it, was it gaming the system or simply working within the system that existed?

At first, feelings of excitement and disenfranchisement collided within me. On the one hand, I was elated that a bestseller was realistically within my reach – that this elusive status symbol was something I could actually control. But my excitement was tempered with the recognition that the trust I had placed in the very lists endorsed by reputable publications like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Publisher’s Weekly, and others, might not represent the institution I had assumed it was.

. . . .

I played the bestseller game using unwritten rules. And as I reflect upon what I experienced and learned, it’s clear to me that anyone with enough money can potentially buy his or her way onto a bestseller list. Although most authors attempt to pre-sell books to their existing networks, theoretically, as long as one has enough money to purchase 3000 of their own books while using the tactics of a bestseller campaign to do so, they are basically guaranteed bestseller status. When I have told this same story to friends, family, and my close colleagues, most end up with their jaws on the floor.

Out of the millions of books published each year, very few become bestsellers. Most first-time authors are unaware that these campaigns exist and, if they are, most are unable to apply the strategy because the costs and pre-selling requirements are beyond their reach. In the bestseller campaigning process, a book’s quality – good or bad – has surprisingly little to do with it.

Link to the rest at Leapfrogging, which includes a detailed anatomy of a paid bestseller campaign

As PG read this, he was reminded how righteously indignant many publishers and trad-published authors became when they learned about sock puppet reviews some indie authors bought on Amazon.