Monday 24 January 2011

Ebooks in Europe

Publishing Perspectives have an interesting article today on ebooks in Europe by Daniel Kalder.

There was no ebook market at all in Italy and Spain until summer 2010 but Europe could go on to become the third biggest market for ebooks after the US and Japan. There are no Kindles, Kindle users have to import from the UK.

"In Italy Rizzoli, Feltrinelli and Gruppo Gems developed the E-digita platform, In France a group comprised of Gallimard, Flammarion and others brought out Eden Livres. Most publishers use ePUB to make their books available digitally. Some use PDF format — but in the fiction and non-fiction segment they are a minority."

Read the full article here

Wednesday 19 January 2011

UK/Irish Ebook Author Sells 44,334 Novels on Kindle UK In One Month

Stephen Leather must be the most successful 'indie author' outside the US.  His vampire novel Once Bitten and The Basement, a serial killer story set in New York, are numbers 1 and 2 in the UK Kindle bestseller fiction chart respectively. Another of his novels, Private Dancer, set in the world of Bangkok dancing girl bars, has been highly praised for its authenticity (he lives between London, Dublin and Bangkok).

His Kindle sales chart, which he's just published on his blog, shows clearly that selling ebooks at 99 cents brings in a great deal more sales than 'full price' ($2.99/$3.99). Since Amazon revised their royalty payment schedule last June, however, the 99 cent option is no longer open to new indie authors. The lowest price an author can now charge is $2.99 in the US and £1.49 in the UK, for which they receive a 70% royalty.

Stephen Leather's blog: How To Make A Million Dollars From Writing Ebooks (or How I Learned To Love The Kindle.

Monday 17 January 2011

Kindle Impact on UK Likely To Be Similar To US, Stats Are Showing

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As HarperCollins reveals digital sales figures of its number one title, Shatter The Bones by Stuart MacBride, FutureBook's Philip Jones says Kindle is likely to have same impact on UK as in US.

Wednesday 12 January 2011

Ebook Self-Publishers - The Top 25 Earners

Jason Davis at TeleRead lists December sales figures for top indie authors ranging from 2,500+/month to 100,000+/month.

He estimates that top seller Amanda Hocking is taking $209,000 a month.

Read the full article here.

Tuesday 11 January 2011

Publishing Innovation Awards Longlist

The longlist for first ever Publishing Innovation Awards has been announced.

The best ebooks and apps have been split into 5 categories: origination, development, production, design and marketing.

UK contenders include:

Atomic Antelope's Alice for iPad

and

Canongate Books Ltd's Why the Net Matters: How The Internet Will Save Civilisation by David Eagleman

Another non-US contender is New Zealand's

P Q Blackwell Ltd's Andrew Zukermann: Music (and what an amazing website they have).

The top 5 finalists in each category will be announced at the Digital Book World conference in New York on Monday, 17th Jan 2011.

Read more here.




Thursday 6 January 2011

Self-Publishing To Go Mainstream In 2011

In his top 5 ebook predictions for 2011, US ebook guru Mark Coker says that, as 2010 was the year ebooks went mainstream, 2011 will be the year indie authors go mainstream.

Agents will be encouraging their new authors to work directly with ebook distribution platforms. Authors can showcase not only their writing and storytelling skills, but their marketability as well. In hard figures. Agents will then use these for leverage when negotiating print deals.

The US (plus France, Holland, Japan and many countries in Asia) are ahead of the UK, but, in the past few months, momentum here has soared. Next year's growth trajectory is going to be steep. It looks like the UK will be on a more parallel course for change as it happens in the US.

Five Ebook Predictions for 2011 - Huffington Post