49 Author Earnings Report

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News:


Non-Amazon retailers making changes

WalMart/Kobo team-up

Apple investing more into ebook sales 

Nook making changes, improving royalty rates for high-priced books

Google Play adding audiobooks


Author Earnings Report

View it here

Highlights:

Last three quarters of 2017:
Online ebook sales: $1.3 billion
Online audiobook sales: $495 million
Online print sales:  $3.1 billion*

*Print figures are dramatically skewed by textbook sales, which tend to be priced in the hundreds of dollars and are required purchases for students.
*When nonfiction is removed, 70% of adult fiction sales are ebook or audiobook.

By genre:
90% of romance purchases are ebooks
75% of SciFi are ebook and audio

By month:
Audiobook sales showed little variation
Ebooks also showed little variation, with May and June being the lowest
Print sales were volatile. May-July was the lowest. High peak in August. Declining through November (though still higher than May-July) and rising again in December.

Sales breakdown:
Big 5: 25% of sales and 43% of dollars
Indie or indie press: 35.9% of sales and 25.3% of dollars
Amazon imprints: 9.8% of sales and 5.1% of dollars

Sales Growth:
Trade publishers grew by 1.1%
Indies grew by 2.1%

Ebook sales by genre (in millions):
Literature and Fiction 70
Romance 50
Mystery, Thriller, and Suspense 35
SciFi and Fantasy 19
Teen and Young Adult 7
*In terms of dollar per unit sold, Romance is well below the other categories.

Sales by price point:
$3.00-$3.99 is almost identical to $0- $0.99
$2.00-$2.99 next, closely followed by $4.00-$4.99
$9.00-$9.99 outsells the other categories

Top-selling ebook authors:
7 of the top 100 were indies
50 of the top 250 were indies
284 of the top 1,000 were indies
102 of the top 1,000 were published by Amazon imprints

*Many of the top-selling indies are new names. Many previous top-sellers aren't hitting the list.

Conclusions: 
The ebook market and audiobook market remain strong, but highly competitive.
There is still plenty of room for new authors to succeed and established authors to continue earning a solid income.