Rocket Bomber - article - publishing - business - Ebook sales projection - 4th update

Previously:
Original Projection : 1st update September 2012 : 2nd update December 2012 : 3rd update April 2013

With the introduction of the joint AAP/BISG BookStats program, the reporting that used to be available in free press releases is now locked behind a paywall. It still leaks out, in dribs and drabs, but getting numbers to plug into this graph is difficult, to the point where I don’t even want to bother with it.

The other fun fact is that AAP sales numbers are only those from the 1000+ publishers who voluntarily submit their data to the surveys, and as such are not complete. Most glaringly, and a fact noted over and over again by others, the ebook sales numbers do not include Amazon or other self-publishing.

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If you really want to know about the math, click through (up top) to some of the previous updates. [tl;dr the projected sigmoid growth curve is a tanh(t) function which ticks off monthly t-for-time in teeny fractions of π.] Needless to say, the projections I made in 2011 haven’t quite held up to the test of time.

And there’s that chunk, unreported, invisible, of self-published books that make up a small? large? portion of ebook sales each month.

Follow me along through this thought experiment:

What if self-published ebooks had their own growth curve? Separate from the major publishers (and other AAP members) and reflecting a different time frame, adoption rate, and limiting factors. Would this explain “the drop” we noted with glee (or skepticism) this time last year?

I think it does. I think we can even pinpoint the moment this independent market began to grow and while the total numbers were initially small, after a couple of years the “interference” this introduced was enough to move the “official” sales reported by the AAP. On the graph below, check what happened around and after July of 2012:

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Of course, since Amazon holds tight to any actualsales numbers that might illuminate the issue, my guess (educated, inspired, or otherwise) is still just a guess. If anyone at Amazon has the numbers and can see if my projection is close, then of course please contact via email and we can discuss my future employment at your fine company.

For everyone else: I see a market for ebooks currently at $150 Million a month—and slowly growing—for the orthodox publishing companies, and a smaller (related, but separate) self-published ebook market that currently stands at about $75 Million a month and will likely be double that at year’s end. Self-publishing is smaller and will remain smaller than the output of the orthodox publishers until mid 2015. (in ebooks; the impact on print books and text books are still great big question marks and beyond the scope of this little thought exercise.)

So far, I don’t think I’m wrong. Even my first chart 30 months ago wasn’t wrong — I was just waiting for more data. Given the data we now have, I like this version well enough.

What say you? Do you think self-published ebooks are clearing $75 Million a month? What is their growth potential?