As an indie publisher and writer, I have to keep up with the trends in the industry to change when needed and learn h
ow to best leverage my business (evil word!). I found it interesting that despite the rise in ereaders and digital only authors, print books are still holding down the fort and both readers and authors like it that way.
According to a recent Pew Internet Research study, e-reading has grown 11% since 2011. However, most people still read print books by far. This begs the question why anyone would come out with just a digital only book. That’s a lot of revenue left on the table and a lot of potential fans that are missing out on your work if that’s the case. Yes, you do have to format a print book much different than an e-book. But it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to ignore that when the numbers are screaming otherwise.
The graph on the right says that 69% of people surveyed still read print books almost three times as much as those who read ebooks. That’s over twice as many.I talked about this before and how indie authors really need to diversify by releasing in both print and digital. I think most authors get that but you have some which only release their books digitally and it could be one of the reasons why so many indie authors are not making the revenue they want which I touched on last week.
As expected, ebooks are more popular among younger readers than older. However, and may be a little bit of a surprise, the youngest age bracket (18-29) was most likely to read a print book. 79% of them stated that they had read a print book in the past year.
Digital Books World and Writer’s Digest 2015 Author Survey found that when it came to revenue, approximately 79% of an indie author’s sales of their most recent title came from digital sales. I know what your saying. “Well, there it is. That’s why some authors go digital only.” But that’s not the whole story.
Of an author’s most recent traditionally published (I’m assuming this means legacy publishing) print books, it accounted for about 44% of their sales. In addition, legacy published print book earnings were more than the average indie published book ($3,000 to $ 4,999 vs. 1-$499). I mentioned this last week. But like I said then, I’m not discouraged by that because I know writers and I know that many of them are not really pressing into this business full boar. I have no hard data to back that up but I almost guarantee that is the case. To rise to the top of the pile as an indie publisher and writer, you need to go full boar and beyond. It is hard work. The question is, how bad do you want it?
If you want to get the full details, click this link: Why Authors and Readers Still Want Print
