Case Study: Print vs. eBooks Sales

I talk a lot about the ebook "revolution" here, and how it's developing in terms of trends and stats. And while it's certainly interesting to see facts and figures such as those I put up in my last post, I thought it might be a good idea to give a personal insight into why these numbers matter.




Although the figures reported by the "Big Six" of the industry and their major market outlets show one side of the story, for many of us down here on the streets of independent-ville there's an altogether different perspective on those facts. New York Times best-sellers in the main marquee at Barnes & Noble may sell tons of print editions and a relatively moderate supply of ebooks by comparison. But while those handful of titles may make up the majority of sales overall, they don't make up even a fraction of the titles being sold and read around the globe. For every Grisham thriller selling millions each, there are millions of titles selling only handfuls each, but being read and enjoyed by humans nonetheless. How they get before those eyes is irrelevant in the end, except in knowing how and where an author might best market their work.




So here's my personal take on the digital versus print issue...



Above is a screenshot of the print book sales of my first novel The Saga of Beowulf on Amazon, over the course of the last two years. The book came out in October of 2008, but Amazon's sales tracking in Author Central only goes back this far. This accounts for some 50-60 sales in nearly two years, at least one spike of which is six books purchased by a friend of mine for clients. Initial sales after the book's launch were higher and more consistent for the first six months while I was promoting it heavily, and these are all residual sales achieved well after the fact with no additional promotion other than this blog and my website. Certainly nothing to make a living from, but at a list price of $14.99 for a 640 page historical fantasy novel by an unknown author, it's not surprising.




But here's where it gets interesting...

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These are my Kindle sales for the same title over the last 15 months, which is again as far back as Amazon has tracking data available. This accounts for over 600 copies sold in three-quarters of the time the print book chart covers, and only for the single volume edition on Amazon here in the U.S. There is also a two-volume version available with bonus content on virtually every online retailer out there, including the iPad where print books are verboten. But this version sells the best. So while my print edition has barely cracked the top 100,000 on a handful of occasions, the equivalent digital edition has never fallen below 200,000 ever, and peaked at around 9600 not long after its release, with a 13,000 appearance just last month. And this at a price of $4.99 (which Amazon has consistently discounted to $2.51 for most of its life thus far). It's not a .99 cent novel, and can never be, since the large file size prohibits it. If it were .99 cents, it would probably sell even better. But since the book's release three years ago now I've sold close to 3000 copies altogether, in all editions and venues, so I'm okay with that. Particularly given where things seem to be going.




You'll note an interesting shift in my sales trend beginning the day after last Christmas, and continuing steadily ever since. That's when people started buying ebooks for their new Kindles. This is what my sales looked like back in late 2008 and early 2009 as I was undertaking a blog tour, garnering reviews, and doing interviews. But as I said, this new trend is with absolutely no directed promotion on my part at all. Instead, the jump is entirely due to the number of Kindles given as gifts last year and the rapidly increasing number of people reading ebooks. So you can see why I'm a little bit excited for this holiday season and the release of Amazon's new tablet, and why the stats for ebook sales overall are of particular interest to me.




Big name authors may still make their living from selling print editions, but I certainly don't, and I likely never will. But ebooks offer a glimmer of hope.