Some interesting statistics on publishing

I learned many interesting things at the Literary Consultancy’s conference Writing in a Digital Age.[1]

Social networking doesn’t sell books.
Sales of eBooks has gone from 0 to 12% of all books sold in 2012 and are predicted to outsell print books by 2017.
The self published share of all books sold was 2%, and of eBooks it’s 12%.
The most popular eBook genres (20%) are romance, crime – true and otherwise – and ‘classic’ fiction; followed by erotic fiction, fantasy/Sci Fi and popular fiction. Children’s books and graphic novels, perhaps not surprisingly, hardly rate at all.
There is a word called ‘discoverability’.
The most widely-bought books are by authors the reader has already read, and word of mouth and reviews come surprisingly far down the list.
eBooks are discovered mostly by readers browsing online for a particular author or series of books, whereas self published eBooks are discovered mostly by readers searching for a particular subject.
reasons for buying are, for all books: subject, author and price (in that order); for all eBooks: author, subject and price; and for self published eBooks: price, blurb, subject.
so far as price is concerned it becomes less of a factor if a book costs more than £1.
women buy more books (of all kinds) than men and the under 45s more than the over. 45s, but the biggest market for self published eBooks is women over 45.

Jon Slack and Rebecca Swift, joint organisers of the TLC conference

Regarding SEO (search engine optimisation) anyone, even writers, can get their head around Google and Amazon algorithms if they just put the work in.[2] Among Google searches (in 2012):

Romance books generated over 5m searches, followed by Sci Fi and detective stories.
Readers search for subject rather than authors or publishers (excepting Mills & Boon), and
they rarely look beyond the first three results.
Size doesn’t matter to Google – they don’t know (or care) if you are Random House or Joe Blow.
There are 300 variables that drive the algorithms on websites, including how recently a site was updated, how old it is, quality of content including spelling and grammar, etc etc etc. (Which conjures up a great image of the schoolmaster up all night poring over blogs with a red pencil.)
When it comes to Amazon categories you should research the ones that sell the most rather than the most appropriate.
The marketing of eBooks should be staggered; the self published writer should come up with different ideas as they go along.
People who ‘buy’ your book for free don’t necessarily go on to pay to read you.

I also learned that 80% of all chick lit covers feature the colour pink and ‘cursive’ font (like handwriting), and 30% feature women’s legs, usually in pencil skirts. [3]

So now we know.

However such is the nature of publishing, self and otherwise, these statistics will probably be out of date by this time next year. Who knows?

For a full and considered account of the conference see here: http://www.bookbrunch.co.uk/pid/article_free/the_literary_consultancy_writing_in_a_digital_age

I am now off to write a romance novel about a woman who wears pink pencil skirts.

[1] Statistics courtesy of Steve Bohm, UK Research Director, Bowker Market Research.

[2] According to Chris McVeigh of Fourfiftyone.co.uk.

[3] Thanks to Kristen Harrison of The Curved House.