Last week, Hugh Howey came out with another Author Earnings report. He’s got some interesting analysis of the figures, but perhaps the most interesting thing is how consistent the numbers are. The market share values only changed by a couple of percentage points from the February sample to the April sample (and generally did so in favor of indie publishers).
Indie-published books represent 30% of overall daily unit sales, up from 27% in February. Big Five sales are down to 37% from 39%. In terms of daily revenue to authors from bestsellers, Big Five has held steady at 39% whereas self-published has risen from 35% to 37%. It’s catching up…
Of course, these percentage changes are probably close enough to the margin of error that you can’t read a whole lot into the shifts, but the simple fact that they’re nonetheless around the same numbers is telling. It’s not just a fluke; the numbers are consistent. And the more samples Author Earnings takes, the better picture they’ll show.
Tomorrow, Howey plans to release a report looking at what data means to new authors just starting out today. It should be interesting.
