Hugh Howey and someone known as Data Guy have been using Amazon rankings to get a glimpse of how indie published books and authors are doing compared to the Big [insert decreasing number here].
Their latest report came out today. I’m not going to parse the whole thing. You can read it for yourself here. It contains some very interesting information on the effect DRM has on sales. (Spoiler: it can really hurt sales. Check the graph.)
What I am going to do is point out something that might be of interest to readers of this blog, and that’s the percentage of sf/f ebooks sold on Amazon that are indie published. Here’s the graph from Author Solutions:
As you can see, over half the sf/f books are indie published. Keep in mind these are ebooks only and the data is from Amazon only. Still, that says something. What the main houses are publishing is either not to the liking of the majority of readers with Kindles or Kindle apps, too expensive compared to the prices on indie books, or both.
For over a year and a half now, I’ve been reviewing indie published titles at Amazing Stories. I was reviewing indie titles here long before that, and I still do.
Barnes & Noble sent me a coupon today. I could hardly find anything I was interested in when I dropped by the store earlier this evening. The review copies from some publishers had something to do with that. Several titles I would have bought were already in the queue.
Still, I think the more exciting stuff is what’s not being filtered through New York. The data released today at Author Solutions indicates that I’m not the only one.
What do you think?
Pretty much agree with you here. At long last we can actually see what readers want, not what we’re told we want. It’s refreshing. As writers we are free to explore ideas outside the norm and we can test the market and adapt, or we can write in a niche and stay there hoping to create a small but loyal following. Creative expression has never been this free.
Interesting. Still not savvy enough to work it toward my own promotion etc, but excited none the less to work at writing what I want to read and seeing what people like. And I’ve made it a point that all my own self-pubbed stuff is DRM free.
Woelf, you’re absolutely correct. We are living in a golden age of creative expression.
David, I’m not sure how use this information in promotion, either. If you figure something out, please let me know. I want to have some of my stuff ready to put out there by the end of the summer. And all of it will be DRM free.