Friday, December 06, 2013

Amazon reveals quarter of Kindle ebook sales in US were for indie publishers

Figures from world's biggest bookseller trumpeted as sign of how self-publishing and smaller labels are changing the industry

Man reading Amazon Kindle
'I wouldn’t be surprised if we reached a situation where the majority of the top books are author-published,' said Orna Ross of the UK Alliance of Independent Authors. Photograph: Eyeswideopen/Getty Images

As many as a quarter of the top 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com are from indie publishers, according to data revealed at a trade presentation by the retailer.
A chart detailing the 25 top-selling indie titles in 2012 was passed on by an audience member via Twitter. Though the term indie is broad, covering everything from self-published authors to publishing houses that fall outside the big six, the news has been interpreted as a victory for the go-it-alone author. However in the US the term has come to mean self-published. A spokeswoman for Amazon.com said: "This figure is referring to Kindle books on Amazon.com in 2012, with 'indie' meaning books self-published via Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). So a quarter of the top 100 bestselling Kindle books on Amazon.com in 2012 were self-published via KDP."

Writer.ly , an online marketplace that connects authors with freelance editors, book designers and marketeers, tweeted a picture of the chart on Wednesday. It displayed the top 100 books, with about a quarter of the covers highlighted, under the title "A Quarter of top 100 on Amazon.com Indie-Published".
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