57- 2017 Earnings Breakdown and Analysis

Click Here to Listen to the Podcast Episode

Here's the breakdown by vendor and source of my 2017 publishing income along with comparisons to 2016:

Share of Gross Income by Vendor

2017
Kindle: 73.8%
Nook: 5.3%
Kobo: 5:7%
Audible: 5.6%

iBooks: 4.8%
Print: 2.3%
Google: 1.4%
Other vendors: 0.1%
Translations: 0.1%
Trad pub: 0.8%

2016
Kindle: 77.7%
Nook:     6.2%
Kobo:     5.4%
Audible: 4.4%
iBooks:  3.7%
Print:     2.0%
Google: 0.4%
Other vendors: 0.1%
Translations: 0.1%

Income Increase/Decrease from 2017

Google Play	223%
Translations	39%
Apple	27%
Audible	21%
Paperback	14%
Other	13%
Kobo	-1%
Kindle	-8%
Nook	-17%

Observations
-Kindle decrease is primarily attributed to the amount of time and effort invested in Kindle Worlds. Those books sold well, but brought in much less per-unit sold than books I published myself. Also, most were underpriced, in my opinion.

-I was pleased to see income from iBooks (Apple) increase.

-Audible increase is primarily due to sales of audiobook bundles as well as terrific sales of Primordial.

-I'm not sure why paperback income increased, but I'm not complaining.

-Google Play increased significantly. This is mostly due to the fact that I didn't have my full catalog in GP in 2016, but I do think their market share is growing.

-Nook income fell, which is not surprising to me.

-Income from translations and from "other" channels (Scribd, Tolino, Overdrive...) increased, but the income from those channels are so small that the changes aren't statistically significant.

Looking Back at Last Year's Musings

Last year: Several of my author friends tell me they are doing very well on iBooks. I'd like to increase my sales and visibility in that store.

 Mission accomplished! 27% increase in gross income and a modest increase in market share.
 
LY: I'm curious to see whether or not the lending program Kobo is beta testing will have an impact on sales.


Not yet. At this time it's only available to a couple of countries.

LY:Rumors are circulating that Audible plans to roll out an audiobook lending service, which will also be interesting to watch.


As far as I'm aware, this is still limited to the romance genre and authors have been unhappy with the compensation.


With the launch of the Dane Maddock Kindle World, I expect Kindle income to continue to rise in proportion to the other vendors.


In terms of units sold, this did happen, but not in terms of income.

-I am strongly considering going exclusive with Createspace, as the paltry sales through Ingram mean the annual listing fees for all books in my catalog aren't worthwhile.

I did cancel a number of titles with Lightning Source, but I have been experimenting with Ingram Spark. Rumors are circulating that CreateSpace will be going out of business. We'll see what happens.

Looking Ahead

-I expect Google, iBooks, and Audible to continue to grow.

-Not sure what to expect from Kindle. I'm still in the process of republishing the Kindle Worlds books. I'm hopeful they'll perform better now that I can control the advertising.

-I'm interested in seeing what happens with CreateSpace. I will probably experiment with KDP print because you can run AMS ads for print books published with them.

-Indie-published translations have not been worthwhile so far. This year, a single advance on one translated book earned four times as much as I made from my entire catalog of translated works in 2017. I might cancel my translations once the contract terms expire and see if I can sell rights to foreign language publishers.

49 Author Earnings Report

Listen to the podcast episode

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.

2016 Earnings Breakdown

Listen to the companion podcast episode.

It might be a little late in the year for this, but I thought I'd take a look back at my 2016 earnings and break down how much each vendor contributes.

As expected, Kindle was, by far, my most lucrative channel, accounting for more than three times what I earned from all other formats and platforms combined. It breaks down like this:

Kindle: 77.7%
Nook:     6.2%
Kobo:     5.4%
Audible: 4.4%
iBooks:  3.7%
Print:     2.0%
Google: 0.4%
Other e: 0.1%
Translations: 0.1%

Observations:

-Though my non-Kindle earnings seem small by comparison, I still earned a great deal more on my non-Kindle sales than I did in my previous day job.

-Nook earnings slightly declined over the course of the year.

-Kobo earnings generally held steady.

-iBooks earnings were up and down, but ended the year on an upward trajectory.

-Paperback earnings include both Createspace and Ingram (LSI and Ingram Spark).

-Since print-on-demand paperbacks are high-priced compared to their mass market counterparts, I generally price my paperbacks as low as possible. It might be worth experimenting with higher price points.

-I didn't join Google Play until the beginning of the year, and at first, I found their interface confusing, so I was lazy about listing my books. I think I finally have it down. That said, even the best months at Google Play barely surpassed 20% of the other, non-Amazon, ebook retailers.

-I sell almost nothing through small etailers such as Scribd and Smashwords. (When I say I sell almost nothing at Smashwords, I'm referring to direct sales to Smashwords customers via their site. SW remains a valid service to distribute to/sell on iBooks, Nook, etc...)

-I have been using Bablecube to sell translations of my books. Unless I can develop some effective marketing strategies, it might be wiser to hold on to rights and wait for translation offers.)

Looking Ahead
-Several of my author friends tell me they are doing very well on iBooks. I'd like to increase my sales and visibility in that store
 
-I'm curious to see whether or not the lending program Kobo is beta testing will have an impact on sales.

-Rumors are circulating that Audible plans to roll out an audiobook lending service, which will also be interesting to watch.

-With the launch of the Dane Maddock Kindle World, I expect Kindle income to continue to rise in proportion to the other vendors.

-I am strongly considering going exclusive with Createspace, as the paltry sales through Ingram mean the annual listing fees for all books in my catalog aren't worthwhile.

Overall
 On the whole, 2016 was a solid year. I was disappointed that, for the first time in many years, my units sold decreased, as did my income. I can attribute this to a lack of new releases in 2016, especially no new Dane Maddock main series book, which is my bestselling series. (Xibalba almost made it in at the end of the year, but I wound up publishing it the first week of 2016 instead.) 
 I also had to wait for Cohesion Press to publish Primordial. Had it been an indie book, it would have been out in early 2016.

I expect this year to  be better. I've been more productive, my co-authors are working hard, and the Kindle World has done very well. Fingers crossed!