Ebook sales fall

It seems Ebook sales declined by 2.4% in 2015, the first drop in numbers of books sold in this medium for the “big five” publishers since the digital age began.

According to the Bookseller, ebook sales slid as follows:-

Penguin Random House by 0.4%

Hachetteby 1.1%

HarperCollins (excluding Harlequin Mills & Boon by 4.7%

Pan Macmillan by 7.7%

Simon & Schuster by 0.3%

Slowed growth rate in ebooks is attributed in part to the publishers’ shift to agency pricing for ebooks and the fact that they have increased ebook prices.

Self-published ebooks are making a difference, too, by taking market share from the bigger publishers. According to a survey last year, self-published ebooks account for anything between £58m and £175m. 

In a November report, it claimed the big five account for 31% of all ebooks sold on Amazon.co.uk, while self-published authors have reached 26%.

Read Alison Flood’s article https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/03/ebook-sales-falling-for-the-first-time-finds-new-report

Wednesday 3 February 2016

I can add that the Bookseller does not consider the effect of Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited system on individual authors. My personal experience may be different to everyone else, it’s true, but my income is now coming from the US Pages Read system rather than items bought. The UK seems to have stopped reading – or at least buying – since the referendum on June 23^rd!