So, doing some interesting reading tonight.
Specifically, it’s on Smashwords’ third annual survey of
what is driving the sale of independent authors’ ebooks.
Smashwords has a good summary of the study on the linked
page, but I’m having some fun going through the study itself to see what comes
up. I’ll sum up the interesting points:
Readers want longer books. Or, since correlation doesn’t
necessarily mean causation, the most popular books sold on Smashwords tend to
be longer. I don’t know what that means. Maybe it’s a perception of cost vs.
value. A longer book seems to be a better bargain than a shorter one.
Romance books are highly popular. They account for 7 out of
10 of the service’s top sellers. They tend to be “more experimental” Smashwords
says (no word on what that means). Smashwords provides data to back up
something I’ve noticed on GoodReads anecdotally: Most of the books people are
searching for in the “What’s the Name of That Book” category are romance
novels.
Free books tend to be the biggest movers – but the value of
free has declined dramatically in the Smashwords surveys over the past three
years. For example, in 2012, free books were downloaded on average 100 more
times than books with a price tag. The number fell to 91 times in 2013 and
plummeted to 39 times more in 2014. Free books continue to be a strong platform
builder, but not as strong in the past. It’ll be interesting to see where this
free phenomenon goes in the future.
Part of me wonders if the free phenom is being diluted by
poor-quality books, or if its plummeting numbers is linked to authors
publishing consecutive times and asking for cash from loyal readers.
Other interesting pricing info, with a caveat (the $2.99 price is the most consistent seller for both fiction and non-fiction):
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