Eoin Purcell's Blog

It's that simple — and that hard. And that inescapable.

Tag: Authors

March 12, 2012

Go Read This | Exclusive: Amazon Has Sold Over Two Million Kindle Singles | paidContent

See what I mean when I say gold? I’ve long felt that by far the biggest weapon in Amazon’s arsenal (after the platform itself) is the self publishing/publishing abilities of the platform which is a while new kind of threat for publishers and one that is becoming much more real and present a danger than just the shift to digital:

Amazon says that in the 14 months the program has been running, it has sold over two million Kindle Singles. Seventy percent of each sale goes to the author or publisher, and Amazon keeps 30 percent. Amazon wouldn’t disclose its total revenues from those two million singles, but the minimum price of a Single is $0.99 and most are $1.99 (the author or publisher sets the price). So with an average price of $1.87 multiplied by two million, a rough estimate of Amazon’s 30-percent cut is $1.12 million. (How much are some authors making? See our post later this morning.)

via Exclusive: Amazon Has Sold Over Two Million Kindle Singles | paidContent.

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March 12, 2012

Go Read This | Exclusive: How Much Do Kindle Singles Authors Make? | paidContent

One of two absolute MUST READ pieces on PaidContent today about Amazon’s Kindle Singles program. A complete coup for Laura Hazard Owen and the rest of the crew over there. The pieces are filled with gold of which the below is only a small amount:

When I got my first royalty check from Amazon, I went to my boss at the bar and was like, “Mike, I quit, dude,” and he was like why, and I was like “Look at this check, man,” and he said, “I’d quit too.”

This is what I’m doing now. My three stories that are out have now sold in excess of 93,000 copies, and I have another Kindle Single that I’m working on for later this year, and hopefully working on a book.

via Exclusive: How Much Do Kindle Singles Authors Make? | paidContent.

There’s so much here but I think it warrants a bit of thought before I blog about it properly!

Eoin

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February 29, 2012

Go read This | Jackie Collins to Self-Publish – GalleyCat

Kind of telling how something like this can happen to so little fanfare, discussion or debate:

In our forthcoming So What Do You Do? interview with Collins, she reveals exclusively to us, that within the next three weeks she will release an eBook for The Bitch, a complete rewrite of her previous version of the novel, with a price point of $2.99 or less.

via EXCLUSIVE: Jackie Collins to Self-Publish – GalleyCat.

It’s a real sign that the industry is REALLY changing and that it is the authors that are driving much of that change (as I’ve written about before way back in 2006 and again in 2010).

Eoin

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February 24, 2012

Why JK Rowling’s New Book Might NOT Be A Boon For Booksellers

I’ve been seeing quite a bit of commentary about J K Rowling’s newly announced book along the lines of the tweet below(1):

The Bookseller also reported some great positive comments like:

Jonathan Ruppin, Foyles web editor, said: “It is clearly huge news, it is the talk of the office already. It will be the biggest selling book of that time, I am sure other publishers will move their books out of schedules to make room for it.

But the truth is there are reasons to expect that the book will NOT be a boost to booksellers. Many reasons in fact, but here are just four:

1) Supermarkets. Like they did with Harry Potter, it seems highly likely that supermarkets will attempt to attract buyers into their stores by selling the new book below cost. Such competition makes such highly hyped titles difficult to sell for independent booksellers and even chains have trouble competing with the likes of Tesco.

2) Ebooks. Well the truth is that booksellers will largely NOT benefit from ebook sales, rather Amazon, Apple and Kobo along with whoever sells the ebook editions will.

3) Online Sales. I suppose the online retailers will do well, but pre-orders, especially through Amazon and Amazon owned sites will probably be the key winner in this space, rather than through independent or chain bookstores.

4) The Economy. So J K Rowling will do well from this but in an environment where free cash is limited the likelihood is that the book will simply change purchasing patterns in the book trade rather than expand the market. Rowling’s big name will attract money and books released around the same time will do less well than they might have with the overall impact being neutral to moderately positive rather than massive. Thus isn’t, I stress, an attack on Rowling, simply the reality of how things go.

All told I’m fairly pleased to see Rowling move past Potter and I think it was wise to move publisher at the same time enabling a proper brand extension. There’s a big part of me hopes that I am wrong, but a bigger part that expects to be right!

Eoin

(1) And I am not picking on The O’Brien Press here!

7 comments
December 3, 2011

Go Read This | How publishers gave Amazon a stick to beat them with — Tech News and Analysis

Easy to say, harder to actually act on. Publishers’ room for manoeuvre is limited by numerous factors and they are far from unaware of the dangers posed by Amazon and other would be monopolists:

As some authors have pointed out, even if you take advantage of Amazon’s self-publishing options to avoid having to get a traditional publishing deal, you’ve really just exchanged one corporate overlord for another. For most writers, the ideal would be an industry with multiple players — but unfortunately, their own publishers have helped make that even less of a possibility. And Amazon is the major beneficiary.

via How publishers gave Amazon a stick to beat them with — Tech News and Analysis.

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