Start of the year thoughts on ebooks

I'm going to cover a couple of quick tidbits:
1. Indie author revenue estimate
2. Ebook market prediction
3. Alternate ereaders

Revenue Estimate
I've already blogged how I think Indie authors are 20% to 33% of ebook market share. Indie authors also charge less than the big6. Almost 1/3rd of what the big6 charge by my best quick estimate. So 1/3rd*10%*20%=0.6% of the revenue.

But that revenue is gaining quickly and soon more Indie authors will have a 'stable of books' selling in the $0.99 to $6.49 range. If you price higher, you had better have *good* and *long* novels. ;)


Ebook Market Prediction
I'm amused at how conservative this prediction is:

Founder of Smashwords is quoted as saying: " “Ebooks sales will approach 20% of trade book revenues on a monthly basis by the end of 2011 in the US” – and account for at least a third of those books that actually get read."

I've predicted 1/3rd of the revenue for ebooks in 2012 and 50% of the revenue in January 2013. I've avoided making any definitive prediction for 2011. The diffusion of innnovation continues. I'll do more curve fitting to better bracket my predictions.

Alternate Ereaders

First, I would watch Samsung. Their first effort into ereaders isn't that exciting, but they have a history of innovating. They are also an incredibly low cost producer of electronics.

The second is the growth in tablets as ereaders. My sister and father still have Kindles, but find they read more on their Ipads. My wife has also started reading on the Ipad. The more 'intense readers' go with the Kindle App and the less intense the Ibookstore. With only one volume tablet on the market from a 'high cost' vendor, it isn't that exciting a market yet. I'm seeing the large numbers of Android tablets coming out this year, including Vizio (TV maker). So I expect tablets to be the majority of new readers in 2011. That isn't to say Kindles/Nooks will not sell well... They'll certainly sell to people who read 20+ books per year. But I think that most people will buy a tablet and then discover they can read on them. Same line of thought goes with smartphones.

Nothing wrong with gateway devices.

A survey on book reading that completely ignores "how many books do you read:"
IPad Doubles E-book Market Share

Happy New Year. I'll blog less as my work schedule is going to be *crazy* for a few weeks.
Neil