After a number of quiet experiments over the years bundling print books and ebooks together, Barnes & Noble has launched an extensive holiday bundling promotion under the banner “Sync Up,” letting in-store customers add an ebook version of eligible titles for $4.99 when purchasing the print editions. Seventy “select paperbacks” are eligible, including Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep, Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, Christina Baker Kline’s Orphan Train and Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. The savings on the bundle vary by title — with the King ebook selling regularly for $14.99, while the Kline and Gabaldon ebooks already sell for […]
Self-publishing
Growth Moderates for ISBN-Carrying Self-Published Books
Bowker has issued a new six-year overview of self-publishing output, prepared in conjunction with their sister company Proquest. While the report provides more robust counts of self-published books annually than the numbers found in Bowker’s regularly, yearly looks at newly published books, there is still one big flaw in using the data to draw sweeping conclusions. Bowker declares: “While self-publishing is alive and well and still showing very healthy growth rates, gone are the days of 60% growth year over year. As the charts in this report show, self-publishing has matured and slowed down to a steadier, less frantic pace.” […]
Amazon Pays Over $500K to Kindle “All-Stars”
As we first discussed in late July, Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription program — which relies heavily on the 500,000-plus self-published books that are exclusive to Kindle — has put additional scrutiny on how much the retailer will pay those authors to retain their loyalty as direct sales are converted into subscriber reads. On Monday, Amazon charged their gatekeeper-free environment by announcing more than $500,000 in bonus payments for August to a newly-ordained set of “KDP Select All-Stars.” The Kindle one-percenters — or rather, the top two one-thousandths of a percent — can receive bonuses of up to $25,000 each, on […]
Amazon Adds KDP For Kids
Amazon has officially launched a KDP Kids initiative that provides authors access to a Kindle Kids’ Book Creator to help create files for illustrated children’s books “that take advantage of Kindle features like text pop-ups.” The new software is offered as a download for both Mac and PC that Kindle svp Russ Grandinetti says in the release their new tool “makes it easy. In addition to helping authors craft their books, we’re helping customers find them with things like age and grade range filters.” A little more description is posted here.
Smashwords Pairs with OverDrive, txtr
Smashwords announced two deals this week: 200,000 of their titles will be available for sale to libraries worldwide through OverDrive. To make things easier for librarians, the two are also “creating curated lists of Smashwords bestsellers and popular genres,” offering for sale collections of the top 100, 500 or 1,000 bestselling Smashwords authors. Separately, 250,000 Smashwords ebooks will become part of txtr’s international ebook catalog.
Some Hints on UK eBook and Self-Published Sales
In London, Nielsen presented 2013 data about the UK market from their Books & Consumers surveys at their annual conference. (They survey approximately 3,000 book buyers per month. Surveys are different from Nielsen Bookscan’s direct point-of-sale data, so bear that in mind when reading about these results.) They estimate based on their respondents that UK book sales totaled £2.2 billion in 2013, with ebooks comprising 25 percent of unit sales but only 13.5 percent of revenues, at £300 million. In their view, ebook sales rose 20 percent during the year. We had noted recently that consumer surveys are one tool […]