Monday News: 8% of ebook titles account for 50% of ebook sales; Texas man arrested over overdue library book; Unique bookish gift.
Uncategorizedbook-sales / Library4 Comments
Largest Publishers Supply Less Than 8% of Ebook Titles; Achieve 50% of Ebook Sales – Based on a 100+ page report by the expert for the consumers in the price fixing case, Thad McIlroy from The Future of Publishing, declares that while 8% of the titles achieve 50% of the ebook sales that the numbers show an overall decline in traditional publishing dominance.
In the two year period between April 1, 2010 and May 21, 2012, 1.3 million individual titles have been purchased and that Amazon, BN, Apple and Sony account for 98% of all retail ebook sales. That leaves 2% to divide between Kobo, Smashwords, All Romance eBooks, and the like.
I’m not sure I agree with McIlroy’s final conclusion – that ebooks are having a significant role in reducing industry dominance by the largest publishers. He states that in 2004, the top 5 held 65.1% of the market. That large publishers supply only 8% of the ebook titles and achieve 50% of ebook sales doesn’t mean that their market dominance is declining, only that it has achieved 50% of the ebook market. What is their percentage of the print market? Is it lower than 65.1%? Higher? Looking at the publisher position in the marketplace without considering print component is looking at only half the picture and lends itself to faulty conclusions. Thad McIlroy – Future Of Publishing
Texas Man Arrested Over Overdue Library Book – In Texas, they do everything bigger including incarceration for tardy library patrons. A Texas man was booked into jail and then released for overdue GED study guide checked out in 2010. Harsh? GalleyCat
Book Map – Wondering what to buy that difficult person in your life? We are Dorothy has a BookMap wherein they’ve created a fake city with titles from your favorite books like “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and “The CandleMass Road”. It’d be fun to do a challenge to read all the places on the map and pin it when you’ve read that place. We Are Dorothy sells all kind of kitschy unique items. Don’t know if they ship to the US though. Buzzfeed
Starbucks turns Twitter into the caffeine delivery system of the future – Facebook has gifts that you can give to other users based upon their “like” habits and now Starbucks brings the ability to tweet a Starbucks gift certificate of five dollars to your favorite Twitter personality. Sign up at the Starbucks website and you’ll be able to tweet gifts all day long or for as long as your wallet holds out. This is both ingenious and dangerous because as we all know, unless we have to type in our credit card or pull out our wallet we aren’t really spending money. Daily Dot
That Texas story breaks my heart.
I don’t understand the Texas story. I’m a librarian, and while yes, I’d like to get our collections back, a good library builds in a cushion for things to go missing occasionally. No regular circulating book is worth that much fuss.
Thanks, Jane, for covering my blog post I appreciate the critique.
The best marketshare figures I can find that are more recent than those quoted on my blog are Michael Hyatt’s , which showed 57.7% marketshare for the top 5 in 2009, a relatively modest decline from the 65.1 in 2004 (particularly because these numbers are always a little slippery).
I should have been more explicit in my argument. We know from numerous sources that ebook sales are eating into print sales, certainly for the largest publishers. With ebook sales now accounting for roughly 23-30% of the largest publishers total sales, and with their print book sales shrinking, the only way that these publishers can maintain their current market share is either by replicating their market dominance in ebooks, or by significantly increasing their market share in the remaining print book market. Neither seems likely.
Self-published authors, small & nimble, though still with modest sales volumes on a relative basis, are proving far more adept at learning how to successfully market their work than are the big trade publishing groups. That to me suggests that as ebook sales continue to grow as a percentage of total book sales, self-published authors will gain market share.
I’m not trying to imply that the mighty Random Penguin should have sleepless nights. But for the first time in many decades the publishing industry has a chance of becoming less dominated by a very small cadre.