Piotr Kowalczyk posted graphs for Self-Published ebooks in The Kindle Store Top 100 Sellers List in his ebook friendly blog.
(I found this report /post through a this post on The Passive Voice Blog)
These charts speak for themselves- Self-Publishing eBooks is Working & Growing.
Self-Publishing is good for Readers since traditional publishing has a very narrow vision of what should be published—they sell to booksellers, to shelves not readers. Many excellent authors have been turned away by the Big Publisher Gatekeepers but now authors are easily bypassing them to sell their eBooks. This is good for Readers since the The Kindle Store and other eBook sellers will send a free sample of 1-3 chapters which means
Self-Published eBooks let Readers decide which eBooks are good read–as it should be. Readers are the consumers, not Book Shelves.
The average reader may not be aware that Authors who Self-Published on Amazon, and price their books between $9.99 and $2.99, get an unprecedented 70% of the selling price royalty. Books outside that range get 35%. Last spring, when Amanda Hocking showed the world that pricing an eBook for 99¢ can earn an Author more on sheer volume even at the lower percentage, 99¢ eBooks became common. (I don’t know what % royalty the big publishers give Authors for eBooks. One author reported royalties of 20% and the agents fees still has to come out of that. He told them to keep it and self published. I’ve read reports of Printed Book royalties between 15% to 7%–most on to the lower end.
Here are the graphs from ebook friendly. Kowalczyk pointed out that last July (2010) not one self-published book was in the top 100, nor were any books priced 99¢.
Self-published books in Top 100: Summary Jan-Jun 2011
Data collected between June 30th and July 5th, 2011, from Kindle Store’s Bestsellers Archive. Click on months for detailed monthly tables.
| No. of self-pub books in Top 100: |
13 |
26 |
27 |
26 |
22 |
13 |
| No. of self-pub books in Top 50: |
8 |
17 |
17 |
16 |
5 |
7 |
| No. of self-pub books in Top 10: |
2 |
3 |
4 |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| Best self-pub book ranked at: |
6 |
4 |
1 |
6 |
19 |
6 |
| No. of $0.99 self-pub books: |
7 |
17 |
16 |
16 |
18 |
10 |
| Share of $0.99 self-pub books: |
54% |
65% |
59% |
62% |
82% |
77% |
| Average price of a self-pub book: |
$1.99 |
$1.72 |
$1.62 |
$1.62 |
$1.58 |
$1.61 |
| Most expensive self-pub book: |
$3.99 |
$3.99 |
$3.99 |
$3.99 |
$4.99 |
$4.99 |
Full article at: http://ebookfriendly.com/2011/07/08/top-self-published-kindle-ebooks-in-first-half-of-2011
Current Kindle Bestsellers List: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/154606011
KLeRosier 