One of the most interesting emerging markets — emerging in the form of a deluge, that is — is ebooks. Kindle is king, but Amazon’s competitors (Nook, Kobo, etc.) contribute a healthy percentage of global sales, which will probably top a quarter billion units moved this year.
The interesting bit is the number of those units published by absolute independents (indies): content creators as editors, designers and Amazon-partnered media moguls.
That means a lot of dross gets in, but it isn’t all dross. The top-performing indies — Amanda Hocking, J.A. Konrath and Scott Nicholson among others — are completely outperforming the publishing powerhouses.
Traditional publishing is lost at sea with ebooks. They’re pricing them wrong, formatting them poorly and marketing them not at all. The best indies have mastered formatting, have found the sweet spot of pricing (.99 to 4.99), and are marketing like the self-interested creative types they are.
And they're cleaning up.
What comes next will be driven by technology, by the inventiveness of indies and by whether or not the traditionals get competitive. They could crush the indies if they simply dumped their entire backlists into the .99 e-bin.
Conversely, indies will probably better ride the next wave of innovation. The potentials are limitless. F'rinstance, since most ebooks are read on tablets, what’s stopping publishers from inserting video into ebooks?
And who sounds more likely to try that? The indie or the old hand?
The C4:
- Ebook sales are huge and growing, with over 115,000,000 units sold by Amazon alone last year.
- Direct electronic publishing technology means we're all potential ebook sellers.
- The market is straining under this flood.
- Motivated independents are seizing their opportunities and outperforming all competition — including the powerhouse New York book publishers.
