A LOOK AT E-BOOK PUBLISHING

        After teaching and participating in the Oregon Christian Writers Conference last week, I have various bits of information to share that I picked up at the conference. I will be including those here over the next few days.
        I participated in a professional author's panel, that was supposed to deal with the current and ongoing changes related to E-books and Indie publishing, so I made some notes in preparation for the panel. As it turned out, the panel went in a different direction, so thought you might find some of my notes of interest and am copying those below.

 

E-BOOKS:

1. E-books have changed almost everything for the publishing industry.

2. Offers a publishing option not open in the past.

3. E-book never go out of print.

4. By early 2013, e-books accounted for nearly 29% of all trade publishing revenue in the U.S.

5. A quarter of Americans read an e-book in 2012—and it has surely gone up since then.

6. 54% of kids ages 2-13 read e-books—and as they grow up, e-book reading will become even more popular.

7. 70% of e-books are sold to Kindle.  

8. Smashwords, a company that distributes self-published e-books, reports it generated $20 million in revenue in 2013 from taking a small cut of sales from titles it's distributed to e-book retailers outside of Amazon.

9. E-book subscription services have launched where you can subscribe for $8.99 or $9.99 per month.

10. New models for distribution are evolving every day, such as e-book apps for tablets and smartphones, and free e-books funded by ads.

11. What has changed most and will continue to change most after distribution is marketing.

12. With a traditional publisher, it typically takes 2 years to get a book to market, while with an e-book, it can happen in months—sometimes in a matter of days.

13. That means the timing at every stage changes—speeded up.

14. With traditional publishing, it's all about the release date, but with e-publishing it means the book is promoted for as longer time—it's ongoing.

15. Another big change with e-books is the pricing—especially with self-published e-books. Rare to see more than $3.99 or $4.99. Average price for a Top 25 bestselling e-book peaked at $11.79 in the summer of 2012. About a year later it had dropped to $5.41.

16. We're seeing changes, too, in book contracts. Agents are negotiating a 25% royalty on e-books, as opposed to the typical 15% on hardcovers. Some industry leaders believe eventually those e-book royalties will go up to 40-50%.

17. A change that has come in the author/agent relationship is that agents are starting to get involved in digital sales, or have a division that finds e-book publishers for their clients' books—new or reprints. If you have an agent or are looking for one—ask about their policies on digital books and sales.