14 Responses to Some Great Data

1. Carradee says:

   May 25, 2012 at 6:58 pm

   Ooo, that is some nice data! Thanks for linking! ^_^

   I love that casual mention of “Oh, about half of respondents didn’t have an agent, which is normal. *yawn*” (Okay, so I paraphrased that.)

   When I first saw this blog post title, I winced and thought you were going to talk about the recent Taleist self-publishing survey (the significance of which was discussed in the comments of the Passive Guy post). Not saying that there aren’t some useful tidbits in the survey—but I wouldn’t call it “great” data. (I think they tried too hard to interpret the results, anticipating math-challenged readers.)

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   • dwsmith says:

     May 25, 2012 at 8:30 pm

     Caradee, I agree about the Taleist survey. Just silly and not worth the time to even look at.

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2. Diane J Mills says:

   May 25, 2012 at 8:26 pm

   What I got from it was who UK think the “big six” are. Also, 25 percent of the authors in the survey are happy to accept the way publishers treat them. And interestingly, Random House thinks over 70 percent income will come from ebooks and less than 30 percent from print books.

   But the main take away was with you teaching us, we do not need publishers for marketing and to get into book stores. POD printing will do it for us.

   Thank you for teaching me. I do appreciate it.

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3. David Barron says:

   May 26, 2012 at 7:49 am

   An excellent survey, and a good sample (people who have written rather than all “aspiring” writers). Those are some pitiful advances. I thought: well, maybe the pound went up a lot…Google convert…nope. Am I to believe that median income for professional novelists, which translates to about 20k/year? That hurts my brain.

   As for eBooks 70% to print 30%, I can believe it. (anecdotal) At the moment I buy eBooks like mass market paperbacks, and only have hardcover (and good-looking trade paperback) books in my house. I like owning good-looking books, but I want to have a whole bunch of books available wherever I am. Also, I’m more likely to be able to sell back the hardcover to my local used bookstore when I want to refresh / somebody accuses me of being a hoarder.

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   • dwsmith says:

     May 26, 2012 at 1:57 pm

     David, that 70% number is just a myth and will never happen. Honestly, I started hearing that number from traditional publishers when talking about the future of electronic books in 1995. Not kidding. Reality is another matter. At the moment we are at 21-24% generally. And the pace of growth is slowing quickly. I stand by my guess (and it is only an educated guess) that electronic sales across all fiction genres will level between 30 to 35% total. That’s still a fantastic increase in numbers. And at that level it will be the largest area of book selling. Will some genres be higher than that? Yup. Will some genres be a ton lower than that? Yup. But across all fiction, I doubt it will reach 35% total. Still huge, but a vast distance even under the 50% most of us used to say.

     Again, I may be wrong, since it is the future we are talking about here.

     And note: You can’t take reader and tablet sales as any indicator, since all of us with early models are now buying newer ones. Nature of that beast.

     But I can tell you this. Any traditional publisher who is planning on all their sales being 70% electronic, unless they are an electronic publisher only, needs to be avoided. They don’t have a business plan, they have an illusion, and you and your books don’t want to go down with their illusion.

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     • David Barron says:

       May 26, 2012 at 9:47 pm

       Yes. That 30% makes sense. I got a little over-excited and wasn’t thinking straight. 70% of total sales is clearly ridiculous.

       As a Reader, though, right now 65%-70% of my new book purchases are eBooks, with the rest being new hardcovers or nice trade paperbacks for “display” (and easy reading). I still pick up piles of mass market paperbacks, but that’s from used bookstores and that’s a closed loop, because I sell them back when I’m done with them (if I don’t just give them away).

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     • Mercy Loomis says:

       May 29, 2012 at 9:55 am

       Keep in mind, they were specifically mentioning genre fiction. I fully believe genre fiction sells digitally at a much higher rate than non-genre. Romance alone sells a ton digitally. Like David, I also tend to buy digitally, but only for fiction (and I pretty much only read genre fiction of one kind or another). Only authors that I “collect” do I buy new in print. (And Robin McKinley is the only one I’ll get in first edition hardcover. Everyone else I get through the Science Fiction Book Club.)
       I’m still not quite comfy with the idea of only licensing books, but it’s so darn convenient…
       However, I’m much more likely to get non-fiction in print. I find print to be much more useful when I want to look something up. If I can’t remember which out of my giant stack of books on ancient Rome had the chapter on intestate succession law, I want to be able to quickly flip through.
       That may change if the academic presses ever wise-up and stop charging $60 for their ebooks. No. Heck no. There are so many little niche academic books I would buy if the ebooks were only priced at $20 or less. My checkbook is glad this hasn’t happened yet, of course…

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   • Thomas E says:

     May 26, 2012 at 4:38 pm

     £5,000 is a very good advance in the UK. The entire UK fiction industry probably doesn’t gross as much as the top bestseller in the American charts.

     It doesn’t mean a UK author won’t make a good living. Just that unless they are very prolific (six published books a year or more) they need to sell foreign rights to make a good living.

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4. Claire Merriam Hoffman says:

   May 26, 2012 at 11:57 am

   Thanks Dean for the interesting link. As usual I learn so much from you and Kris.

   The person who evaluated the data said “In the US, where the use of e-readers is around 1-2 years ahead of the UK, much genre fiction sells 70% or more on these platforms.”

   Change takes time to sink in and I wondered how much the numbers will change in a UK survey once ereaders reach the US level . Any thoughts?

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   • dwsmith says:

     May 26, 2012 at 1:48 pm

     Claire, not sure how the numbers would change on some of those areas. But I have a hunch the number who have not thought about indie publishing will go down while the number of those who have done it will go up. More and more writers here are doing both in some fashion or another. And learning both to have the option of walking away from a bad contract. So the numbers will change there I’m sure. As for the rest, my guts sense is that novel advances will continue down, as is happening here from traditional publishers. (I had a friend recently tell me that the offer for a book was $2,000 with Konrath-like terms and the author laughed at the publisher. Three years ago the author might have taken the deal, pushed the advance to a grand old $3,000. But now the author knows how much can be made indie, has done it, and just laughed.)

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5. Chuck Emerson says:

   May 26, 2012 at 3:51 pm

   Like the “page” format !

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6. Ramon Terrell says:

   May 26, 2012 at 9:06 pm

   I found it interesting that according to the UK authors, UK publishers generally pay on time and with clear royalty statements. That was surprising.

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   • dwsmith says:

     May 26, 2012 at 10:46 pm

     Ramon, surprised me too. (grin)

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7. Wayne Borean says:

   June 8, 2012 at 6:40 pm

   Thanks for posting that link. The date was an interesting read. Question 20 is the real killer.

   Wayne

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