The German booksellers’ association Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (a.k.a. the nice folks who brought you the German fixed book price agreement among other things) have released their 2012 e-book study. The most notable point is that e-books are now 1 percent of the German book market, up from 0.6 percent in 2010. So as I’ve said before, there’s growth in the German e-book market, but it’s slower than in the US.
The full study is only available as an e-book for 9.95 EUR to non-members (I do hope the members get it for free), but Slideshare has a presentation with plenty of infographics and data online. Lots of interesting information in there, some of it mindboggling, e.g. the fact that only approx. 40 percent of frontlist print books and 30 percent of backlist are released in e-book format as well, which caused an immediate, “Wow, so few?” response from me, since I generally expect that a new book will be available in e-book format as well and am always stunned when this isn’t the case. Just lately I wanted to direct an American to the Kindle edition of a popular German bestseller from a few years back, only to find that the book wasn’t available on the Kindle at all. And this is a popular bestseller from a mayor publisher which has even been been filmed.
In other news, the Canadian e-reader manufacturer/e-book store Kobo has announced that it will open a self-publishing platform similar to Amazon’s KDP very soon. So Pegasus Pulp books will be coming to Kobo very soon.
Here is a great article at the Huffington Post by YA author Jessica Park about how Amazon changed her life.
First of all, here are my e-book sales figures for May 2012:
In May 2012, I sold 16 e-books across all platforms, making this my second best month after December 2011 and January 2012. The detailed breakdown is as follows:
Amazon.com: 11
Amazon UK: 5
This marks the second month in a row where I only sold at Amazon and nothing at the other platforms. I’m still not going to join KDP Select, though, particularly not with Kobo opening up its self-publishing platform soon.
As for which of my books are selling, the historicals are still selling nicely, the Silencer series is finally picking up and my poor red-headed stepstory Courier Duty has finally sold its first copy.
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