Do Self-Published Titles Make Up 22% of UK eBook Market, or 30%?
Nielsen has worked its consumer survey magic and come up with a new estimate of the UK ebook market.
From The Bookseller:
Sales of self-published e-books accounted for 22% of the digital book market in the UK last year, the Nielsen BookInsights Conference today (23rd March) was told, although growth in overall e-book sales is continuing to slow. By contrast sales of audiobooks continued to rise strongly – up by more than a quarter in 2015.
Steve Bohme, research director at Nielsen Book UK, said self-published titles rose from 16% of the e-book market by volume in 2014 to over a fifth of the market (22%) in 2015.
At the same time he said e-book sales grew by 5% in volume in 2015 – a lower growth rate than in 2013 and 2014, leading to the e-book share of books only rising marginally last year by 1% to 27% of the market from 26% in 2014.
it’s funny he should say that self-published ebooks made up 22%, because other sources would put that figure much higher.
Back in November 2015 Data Guy turned the Author Earning Reports' spiders loose on the UK Kindle Store, and he found that self-published titles made up 40% of the titles on the best-seller list, and 30% of the revenue:
The Kindle Store dominates the UK market even more so than the US market, and for all intents and purposes it is the whole of the market (I wouldn’t argue if you called it a monopoly, even).
So which do you think is closer to being correct, Nielsen or Author Earnings Report?
Given what we learned about the AE Report at BDW, I have a higher confidence that the Report is correct than that Nielsen’s surveys would prove an accurate extrapolation of the aggregate UK consumer.
But that report is close to six months old, so the data is stale. But does that mean it’s no good?
image by MissMessie
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