28 January 2011

Ebooks: Royalty Rates and Sales Figures

Last May I took my first tentative steps in the ebook market, indie authoring one of my rights-reverted historical romances Hostage of the Heart. From scanning the body text into a digital file that could be edited to ease the flow of prose, to formatting and adding in the external links, to - shock-horror! - creating a cover that was no more appalling than the one with which the mainstream publisher had blessed it, I did it all. And uploaded it, and sold copies.

And guess what? The sky did not fall in. So I did it again, and again, and again. Why? Because readers bought them. And guess what? The sky still hasn't fallen in. 

So today I read two snippets of reported news:

--- that publishers and agents differ over ebook royalties - publishers consider 25% is good, agents consider 50% is better.

I have news for them both. Up to 70% (Amazon kdp for Kindle) or 85% (Smashwords for Nook, Ipad, Sony) direct to the indie author is better still.

--- during 2010, for every 100 paperbacks sold by Amazon 115 Kindle books were sold (as opposed to freebies given away). 

And this surprises who, exactly? Pity we don't know how many of those were by indie authors. Now that would make both publishers and agents take notice.

Teleread
Amazon announcement 27 Jan 11

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