I would like to tell you about the biggest lie in book publishing. This is not true, and I can prove it. A while ago, I put up a fake book on Amazon. How many copies did I need to sell to be able to call up my mother and celebrate my newfound authorial achievements? Yes, a total of three copies to become a best-selling author.
And I bought two of those copies myself! At last, I had acquired this coveted title for myself. My company has helped sell over five million books and advised or managed book launches with every major publishing house, including Amazon. We have important rules at my company about the projects we take on. Because those authors are everywhere these days. It used to be a real mark of distinction to hit the best-seller lists—because there were fewer lists and fewer authors and before ebooks, pricing across books was pretty universal as well.
The New York Times list has been the most prestigious, published in one form or another since The Wall Street Journal list, which has been around since , is based on Nielsen Bookscan and tends to focus on a smaller number of categories. In mid, I could check reasonably accurately, and there were over 6 million ebooks in the Kindle store.
Now, without access to definitive data, I can only estimate that every year, , new ebooks are published, at the very least. But I would be more inclined to think that the number is much, much higher. So take the 6 million I could verify back in mid and add a million or more for every year after that. The following information was originally published some time ago but has been updated where possible. But, when you consider that the bulk of self-published titles available on retailers other than Amazon Kindle are aggregated via Smashwords or Draft2Digital, these numbers tell a story.
Smashwords has established itself as the primary aggregator of ebooks in the publishing industry. Nook operation to a supermarket chain, the signs are not very positive at all. It has all the hallmarks of a very submissive surrender. Apple fairs little better in the ebook publishing market. After years of battling, it has lost its battle against the DOJ. But in all honesty, Apple lost interest in ebooks not long after the case started. It was all so positive when the iPad arrived, but since then, Apple has, in author language, really lost the plot with regard to book sales.
All of these statistics have huge ramifications for authors. Who should you use to self-publish and sell your ebooks? It is not only a dilemma for indie authors. Traditional publishing houses also need to compete in this oversupplied market of ebooks as well as print books.
If you are self-publishing, of course, Amazon Kindle should top the list. The only possible way is to make sure that you use the best two Amazon categories and seven search keywords. But then again, Amazon has millions of customers hitting the buy button every day for ebooks to read on Kindle and reading apps. Who knows? Way over 6 million vs.
It looks like choosing between a shark-infested ocean and a barren desert. Update: How many ebooks on Amazon? Since originally writing this post, Amazon has removed the facility on Amazon Associates to see how many Kindle ebooks are currently available.
But the best guess is that a new Kindle book title is published on Amazon every three to five minutes. It states on the Kindle Store page entry that:. On the Wikipedia page , check citation 4 for any new updates.
Retrieved March 30, There is now no definitive way to know how many ebooks are in the Kindle store. The best guess now is that around one million new Kindle ebooks are published every year. The trick is to rise above the noise, which is as noble a writing goal as any. The reason why? Basically the tsunami of books that buries every single newcomer!
Content is the hook; commerce is the goal. If users join Prime for early access to a new title by their favorite author, rather than buying a one-off copy of the book, they become much more likely to purchase other things on Amazon—couches, clothes, cutlery, etc. When someone joins Prime, the more they buy of everything we sell.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on sales spikes correlated with awards. Amazon Publishing titles are not exclusive to Prime. At the end of May, the actor and writer Mindy Kaling announced that her third book would be an Amazon exclusive, free to Kindle Unlimited and Prime subscribers. Amazon also acquired the rights to the recent film Late Night , which Kaling wrote, produced, and starred in.
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