The Global E-Book and the Rise of the Digital Self-Publisher
From a presentation I gave at the Lavacon Content Strategy conference in Portland.
Michael Tamblin, the CEO of Kobo, made an interesting observation recently. He mentioned that self-published titles now make up 7 % of sales in the US, which is as big a share as any single major publisher.
But here's the interesting part.
In Latin America, the portion of self-published titles is 10%. In Africa, it's 14%, double the US volume. Most of these titles are local authors reaching local readers in these countries through the global e-book platform provided by Kobo as well as Amazon and Smashwords and the other emerging players.
So what the e-Book revolution is going to do is give local authors and audiences the chance to connect in parts of the world where physical book infrastructure is scarce or non-existent. This will have a momentous impact on the international reading community. Remember the impact mobile phones had in the 1990s by enabling phone communications in countries where land line phones were a rare luxury.
I self-published my ebooks because I thought it would take a long time to find a traditional publisher who believed in my work. I didn't want to wait to share my novels with family, friends and other readers.
Different authors will have different motivations... but what this ultimately means is a net gain in opportunities for writers and a net gain in options for the reading public.
Michael Tamblin, the CEO of Kobo, made an interesting observation recently. He mentioned that self-published titles now make up 7 % of sales in the US, which is as big a share as any single major publisher.
But here's the interesting part.
In Latin America, the portion of self-published titles is 10%. In Africa, it's 14%, double the US volume. Most of these titles are local authors reaching local readers in these countries through the global e-book platform provided by Kobo as well as Amazon and Smashwords and the other emerging players.
So what the e-Book revolution is going to do is give local authors and audiences the chance to connect in parts of the world where physical book infrastructure is scarce or non-existent. This will have a momentous impact on the international reading community. Remember the impact mobile phones had in the 1990s by enabling phone communications in countries where land line phones were a rare luxury.
I self-published my ebooks because I thought it would take a long time to find a traditional publisher who believed in my work. I didn't want to wait to share my novels with family, friends and other readers.
Different authors will have different motivations... but what this ultimately means is a net gain in opportunities for writers and a net gain in options for the reading public.
No comments have been added yet.
