The information you request is diffused throughout the websites I’ve been reading.
Hugh Howey, an author, working with one or more data geeks collected information off of Amazon’s websites, used the ranking of the book to determine sales of the book (supposedly how Amazon ranks books - sales) along with publisher and price for 120,000 top selling books and has crunched numbers. I
n general, his report suggests self publishers/indie publishers have gained surprising market share and self-published authors are making more money (70% of book price via Amazon) than traditionally published authors (17% of book price via publisher) unless you are talking about the Stephen King or James Patterson sized mega author. The primary gain in market share is e-books because self-publisher can’t get the price down on print copies the way the big publishers can but the “little” author or indie publisher doesn’t have to pay for warehousing or shipping of print copies.
Hugh Howie is the face of the “Author Earnings Report”
http://authorearnings.com/july-2014-author-earnings-report/
This latest updated report has once again caused a commotion. The old media deride it as “lies, filthy lies” but so far it seems to hold up. A blogger tested the waters by asking readers to post a comment in a piece called “Indie Authors Quitting Their Day Jobs” was surprised at the number and positive quality of information people posted.
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/07/2014/indie-authors-quitting-their-day-jobs/
Note I have mashed the words “indie” and “self” publishers together as I can’t recall the specific numbers each earned but in general - both gained market share over the Big 5 and the traditional publishers are freaked out and denying the report could be accurate.
Whoa! Thanks for the info.
Is it the same man who wrote Wool?