The Ease of Publishing an Ebook

ISoldat53 writes "This article describes how easy it is to publish an ebook. The author details the costs to the writer for a major publishing house to publish a book and the savings to the writer by self-publishing. He looks to make the same profit selling the book at $2.99 on Amazon as he would going though a traditional publishing process. The book is formatted only for the Kindle right now, but the author explains how it can be converted for other readers, since there's no DRM."

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Yet another article that didn't run the numbers...

[Garwulf]

I never like articles like this - it reminds me a bit too much of the earlier adopter chatter back in 2000 when my own e-book was published (and, despite having everything going for me except not being Stephen King, proved to have an almost non-existent market). Certainly Konrath is describing some benefits to self publishing, so long as you have the savvy and editing skill to pull it off. But when it comes to trumpeting e-books as a better way in general than the printed book, he's giving a very skewed picture.

Will he get a greater percentage of the royalties by self publishing an e-book through Amazon? Absolutely. Part of self publishing is keeping all the profits. Will he make more money than he would releasing a printed book?

That, however, is a much different question. And for that, you have to run the numbers.

Depending on the time of year, the total American book market (net sales) can be anywhere from around $450 million to $1.5 billion per month (there are large peaks and valleys, which is why you get the huge variations). The e-book market occupies around $22 million of this per month (it, oddly enough, has a general but very slight upwards slope, and does NOT have large peaks and valleys). As far as I recall, the audio book will take up around $15 million or so per month, but that's not a number I pay too much attention to, so don't quote me on it. So, for every dollar earned by an e-book, print books will earn anywhere from $20 to $65, depending on the time of year.

Now, these are all very rough figures. The Association of American Publishers tracks this in far more detail on a month-by-month basis. The point is, though, that while a well-established author with a loyal fanbase can mitigate a large portion of this disparity, an average book published only as an e-book can deprive itself of over 90% of its potential income.

(That, for example, is why in my business I use e-books mainly for promotional stuff - they just don't have a large enough market base to support them outside of marketing for what I do.)

So, will Konrath keep a greater percentage of the profit per book? Absolutely. Will he make more money than he would publishing a print volume? Highly unlikely.