Traditional Publishing Ebook Sales Dropped 10% In 2017

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From Forbes:

Traditional publishers sold 10% fewer ebook units in 2017 compared with the previous year, according to data released by PubTrack Digital. Total sales were 162 million in 2017 rather than the 180 million units sold the year before.

The news won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has followed traditional ebook sales trends over the past few years: Nielsen’s reports put 2016 ebook unit sales from the top 30 traditional publishers down a full 16% from their 2015 numbers. But this isn’t a comeback story for print, and shouldn’t be considered evidence of a waning public interest in ebooks. The fact that traditionally published ebook sales fell 10% last year isn’t the full picture. As traditional publishers saw sales drop, audiences moved to indie publishers, largely on Amazon. The reason, according to Jonathan Stolper, who was the SVP and global managing director for Nielsen Book in 2016, comes down to pricing. Nielsen’s Books and Consumers survey, according to a Publishers Weekly paraphrase of Stolper, found “that price is the top priority for e-book buyers when considering which book to purchase.” In 2015, the Big Five publishing houses raised ebook prices to around $8 a book, far higher than the $3-a-book price point independent publishers settled on.

The result: Traditional publishers priced themselves out of the market, and their 10% drop in 2017 is just the latest evidence that the value a traditional publisher adds — whether editing, gatekeeping, or marketing — isn’t as highly valued by ebook buyers as a low pricetag.

. . . .

Amazon has propelled at least a thousand authors in its Kindle Direct Publishing program to success in 2017: That’s the number that CEO Jeff Bezos noted were earning at least $100,000 in royalties in a recent shareholder letter. Nielsen’s numbers across 2012-2015 revealed that as the Big Five publishers’ ebook market share fell 12%, small publishers and self-published authors’ market share rose 23%.

Link to the rest at Forbes

13 thoughts on “Traditional Publishing Ebook Sales Dropped 10% In 2017”

      • Add substitution to elasticity, and market share flows to independents. Just like widgets. Watch for more genres to follow Romance’s lead.

        • As far as I’m concerned, the ones that “matter” already have. 😉

          The only reason the numbers don’t reflect a full shift on the SF&F side is because the fields are very mindful of their history and deep backlist. Which are all tradpubbed.

          I’m pretty sure that if you were to filter out the legacy SF&F titles from sales reports and only looked at recent releases, say from the last decade, Indie SF&F numbers would look a lot like romance.

          Data Guy’s final genre numbers had indie SF&F in the 60% range and that is including legacy sales by the old masters. Factor those out and you’re going to be close to 80%.

          One advantage romance and SF&F have is that since the literati have always sneered at the genres, there isn’t much of an ingrained culture of validation by exploitation. If you’re sneered at when tradpubbed, getting sneered at for selfpubbing isn’t going to faze you. Especially when the numbers come in. 🙂

          • 100% agree with Felix.

            Another commonality between SF&F and Romance is the voracious readership who will suffer withdrawl when the reading list is empty (and gets shaky when it runs low). These people will be prone to trying new authors and a range of formats from short stories through novellas, novels and extended series. This can only aid indie authors who can get work out faster and in formats they fel like writing.

  1. Publishers Weekly had this to add:

    “All the major trade houses, including the Big Five, report sales to PubTrack. The service, however, does not track e-book sales from Amazon’s independent authors… A[n Amazon] company spokesperson said e-book sales at the company have continued to grow globally through traditional outlets and subscription services, specifically Kindle Unlimited.”

    I like how industry media is no longer pretending that the Big Five’s ebook sales dropping means that ebook sales are dropping overall. It seems everyone else’s ebook sales are still going up.

    https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/76706-e-book-sales-fell-10-in-2017.html

    • “I like how industry media is no longer pretending that the Big Five’s ebook sales dropping means that ebook sales are dropping overall.”

      They kinda had to, lest they sound like idiots when someone else points out the real numbers.

      Hmm, there’s a thought, how much longer are those contracts with Amazon? So they can quietly drop agency without admitting anything? (They could even again claim that Amazon ‘forced’ them to!)

      • BPH aren’t displeased with their shrinking ebook numbers at all; CEO’s at the Big Five and their corporate owners, such as Arnaud Nourry, have actually publicly cheered their own falling ebook sales.

        By deliberately shafting ebook buyers with high agency prices that retailers weren’t allowed to discount, BPHs kept print sales and thus bookstores alive a bit longer, ensuring their own competitive advantage continued to exist.

        Translation: BPHs *love* agency; their worst nightmare is Amazon discounting their ebooks, even when the those discounts come out of Amazon’s own pocket.

        • One minor detail: the “growth” in print sales isn’t going to B&M bookstores. It’s going to Amazon.

          And B&N is still withering away. And with it a big chunk of shelf space that Independents can’t make up for.

        • Another ‘minor’ detail that the qig5 didn’t figure into their numbers is any writer with half a brain knows those overpriced ebooks are costing them sales/royalties which costs them money.

          Any bets ‘agency’ has more than a couple qig5 writers trying out that silly self-pub stuff? 😉

          And once the rest of the qig5 flock start hearing that other writers are making good/better money the idea might just snowball …

    • A further point to consider is that while the 10% drop is across all of tradpub, all of tradpub hasn’t raised prices.

      So it is quite possible (probable, even) that the BPH’s sales have fallen more and the full drop is masked by the rise in other tradpub’s sales.

  2. I now download all my favorite authors books published by BPH from the library rather than pay the agency prices. I’m a volunteer at my local library. The librarian told me that their downloadable library is quite popular with their users.

    I wonder if the higher prices they charge the libraries for ebooks makes up for the loss of sales.

  3. When I see a consistent trend of ebooks from traditional publishing houses priced at $9.99 or higher, and in many cases at a higher price than a print version, I am not surprised that their sales would in fact drop.
    Amazon may have been blasted for their fight to keep ebook prices lower, but they seemingly understand that once an ebook is created, it is infinitely reproducible (relatively speaking) for a negligible cost when compared to print. But what do I know?

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