Comments on: E-Book Market Share: Amazon At 75%

By: Always Write

Always Write — Thu, 05 May 2011 04:14:27 +0000

I think Apple made an attempt to pretend they cared about books for iPad marketing purposes: they could claim it was the “#1 selling e-reader” instead of the “#27 (or whatever) selling portable computer.” But they really haven’t improved iBooks or the iBook Store to make it competitive.

And Apple certainly hasn’t promoted their indie authors the way Amazon or B&N have, nor has Apple made it easy for indies to publish directly (doing so with Apple requires a Mac and an expensive, useless ISBN number).

Bottom line, my overall Apple e-book sales are about 1/200th (0.5%) that of Amazon. No more than a rounding error.

By: JRTomlin

JRTomlin — Thu, 05 May 2011 01:22:29 +0000

So far Apple is very unfriendly territory for indie authors, which is interesting. I’m afraid I think that in itself says something about Apple. Considering the success of some indie authors and indies as a whole, I think it’s a mistake on their part but they aren’t exactly known for listening. Anyway, everything I’ve seen agrees with you in general at least. Amazon is definitely the big player in ebooks and Apple has a long way to go.

By: State of the eBook: The Return! | Gear Diary

State of the eBook: The Return! | Gear Diary — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:58:18 +0000

[...] For starters, if B&N has 20% of the ebook market, and it’s fairly likely that Amazon has somewhere in the range of 75%, that leaves 5% to everyone else. Marketshare is a tough thing to pin down mid-year; between new [...]

By: Always Write

Always Write — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 04:17:55 +0000

Thanks for your comment … I’m sure Apple’s numbers are better for well-known authors than for indies like myself, since Apple’s virtual bookstore makes it easy to find the well-promoted bestsellers, but difficult to find books “off the beaten path.” I’d still doubt they’re very close to 22% of all e-book sales, though. My understanding is that number represented sales from only one large publisher. Remember that the largest publisher, Random House, doesn’t even have their books on the iBook Store, and that Apple only has 30,000 titles, compared to over 630,000 on Amazon.

But you’re right, both companies are secretive and often “creative” with the numbers they put out, which is why I wanted to try to shed some light on the real numbers in this post. From everything I can tell, in this case, I think the truth is closer to Amazon’s numbers than Apple’s.

By: Perfect Optimizer

Perfect Optimizer — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 06:16:14 +0000

I suspect that Apple doesn’t sell much in the way of Indie Authors at all yet. Their original figure of 22 percent WAS born out by figures of the major publishers. And both Amazon and Apple are known for their secrecy and spin.

By: Always Write

Always Write — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:07:28 +0000

Camille, thanks for sharing your own stats … the more data points we have, the more accurate our numbers will become. One note is that I excluded Smashwords sales and sales through my own website (both of which are a tiny fraction of my Amazon sales anyway): I was just focusing on the “Big 5.”

Certainly, the numbers from one person don’t paint the whole picture. However, when that person is the best-selling e-book author of all time, and is talking about sales in the millions, it probably gives us a pretty good idea. Also, as you point out, several other authors (including Joe Konrath, who sells in the tens of thousands) have similar percentages to mine. And my own numbers alone don’t prove the case, but we are talking about thousands of sales, and they do help support (a) Amazon’s unambiguous statement, (b) Patterson’s numbers, and (c) Konrath’s numbers. Add all that together and I’m pretty confident that Amazon’s share is what it claims. =)

By: Camille

Camille — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:46:47 +0000

(Also, I should point out that everyone I know reads on an iPod Touch, not a Kindle or iPad. Of course, I read some Kindle books on it, but since the reader has locked in full justification of text (which is awful for reading – it was designed as a way to save paper originally) I buy books at other vendors whenever I can.)

By: Camille

Camille — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:44:25 +0000

While you may very well be right, I gotta say that if we go with individual authors as proof, MY stats have Smashwords blowing all the rest out of the water. The stats provided by people on the Kindleboards showed quite a bit of variation, though their figures were closer to yours. However reporting is pretty shaky for those who publish through a third party as yet (which includes most Indies).