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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