Good news, bad news.

If we believe the tv news, then sales figures suggest the UK was stockpiling novels last week as people prepared for a spell in isolation.

Unhappily, chains like Waterstones are deemed non-essential and have closed too but it does mean that those who sell e-format books may do well. Sales of fiction rose by a third, children's education went up an astonishing 234% - a record figure. Puzzle books, handicrafts and true crime also rose. 

Nielsen Book are keeping track: "We've seen significant jumps in sales of puzzle books, adult colouring titles, home-learning titles for children, study guides, and we have seen been a big increase in sales of paperback novels."

Waterstones may be closed, but supermarkets are still open, and they sell paperbacks. So do Amazon. Physical book sales may now plummet as readers turn online. Waterstones online sales have risen 400% week on week.

It reported a "significant uplift" for classic titles like Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, Toni Morrison's Beloved, F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

"Our bestseller is Hilary Mantel – there is plenty of time now to read those 900 pages of The Mirror and the Light. It's doing really well," said Waterstones fiction buyer Bea Carvalho.

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!

The best selling e-books of 2012

Publishers Weekly has an interesting article - OK, it came out mid 2013, and it's already 2014, so you may have seen it. But I've just found it and I want to keep it ot at least the link to it. I may want to look back at it some day. And there is a certain curiosity in knowing how many titles authors sold....

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/56408-the-e-book-explosion-facts-figures-2012.html

The magazine asked publishers for information on e-book sales. Because they were not specific enough in their questions, they got more info than they bargained for, but when they looked at it, they found lots of  interest. Here's a little quote:

"All the publishers that shared digital information were houses that rack up enough print sales to compete in the bestseller race. And while we estimate that we have more than 1,000 e-books with sales of 25,000+, we know this does not reflect all e-book sales in the book industry. Still, a look at this quantity underscores that the book business is quickly moving to digital. It would be safe to say that the lackluster performance in mass market has a lot to do with the fact that readers are enjoying the convenience of the electronic devices instead of the more traditional convenience of the paperback.

Also, it is clear where backlist sales have gone. Peruse the list and you will see double-digit numbers of titles for most of the bestselling veterans. Nora Roberts may be the most prolific in this area: she has 40 titles on the e-book list, adding up to about 3.2 million in total e-sales; James Patterson has 29 books on the list, with a total of more than 2.6 million; Janet Evanovich scores close to 1.8 million with 19 books."

One phrase leapt out at me: the book business is quickly moving to digital. 

In view of this change in the business, which after a slow, tepid start now seems to be gathering speed like the proverbial stone rolling downhill, I am now seriously thinking about publishing Matho's story myself. I can do it. No worries on that score. I can - indeed, already have, a cover that I think is good enough to be THE cover. The big worry is promotion. The stumbling block to self-publishing is getting the information out there. While I tinker about with yet another edit of the story, and finish off my Viking tale, I shall be exploring better ways of promotion.