You may have heard recent news reports about ebook sales dropping and print sales increasing. As a reader, this likely makes little difference to how you prefer to read (or listen) to books. I read about half ebooks and half paper books depending on whether I’m traveling, how quickly I want to get a book I’m interested in, and whether one of my friends who buys favorite authors’ book in hardback passes them on to me.
As authors, though, how much time and effort we put into marketing print books versus paper books might be affected by reports about ebook sales. For that reason, this Friday I recommend reading Nate Hoffelder’s Digital Reader post. In it, Nate explains why these reports about ebook sales dropping keep appearing, and why the figures, though accurate, are misleading because they leave out a large number of ebook sales.
Those missing sales include, as just one example, any ebook sold by an independent author who publishes without an ISBN. Amazon, among other ebook publishing platforms, does not require an ISBN for ebooks. There are over 5 million ebooks on Amazon, so if even a fraction are published without ISBNs, that significantly skews the figures.
For other reasons results regarding ebook sales are skewed, read Nate’s article here.
Until Sunday–
Best,