The total sum paid out to self-publishers and small presses so far this year is $205.8 million, putting ebook unlimited subscription service Kindle Unlimited on target to pay out $620m in royalties in 2024.
The Association of American Publishers’ Q1 Statshot tells us of trade ebook revenue up in March, but down in January and February, for a total Q1 decline of 1.5% compared to Q1 2023.
But as I never tire of reminding the industry, the AAP paints a partial picture, where ebook stats for APub, for many small presses, and for all self-publishers, go uncounted.
We don’t know how many ebooks Apub sells, or come to that how many ebooks small presses and self-publishers sell – BookStat claims to have a pretty good idea, but doesn’t as a rule share that data – but what we do know is how much Kindle Unlimited, the ebook subscription arm, pays out each month in royalties to participating small press and self-published authors.
APub and self-pub not tracked by the AAP
Before we come to the numbers, let’s be clear about this: we are talking here solely about royalties paid for downloads of small-press and self-published books in the ebook unlimited subscription arm of the Kindle store, Kindle Unlimited (KU), not à la carte Kindle sales. APub and mainstream publishers titles in KU are paid quite separately and add a whole other layer of revenue, of which the APub cash and units are not tracked or reported by the AAP.
So we’ve just been told by the AAP that trade ebook revenues totalled $255.6m in Q1, per publishers reporting to the AAP. Amazon chooses not to report to the AAP, and small-presses and self-publishers have no meaningful way of reporting, so the omission of small press and self-published revenues is an inevitable gray area, not a deliberate ploy to mislead.
Kindle Unlimited paid out $575 million last year
But the result is that we see a warped picture of the true book market, where at least a half million, and potentially a billion or more dollars worth of sales and downloads go uncounted.
Let’s take the at least first:
Last year, for instance, KU paid out over a half billion dollars to small press and self-pub authors, all uncounted by the AAP and largely unreported by the trade media.
We don’t know the April AAP stats yet, but Amazon has just published the April KU payout: $53.9 million.
Along with the $52m in January, the $49m in February, and the $50.9m in March, this takes the total sum paid out to self-publishers and small presses this year to $205.8 million, putting KU on target to pay out $620m in royalties in 2025.
All uncounted revenue
Again, this is all uncounted ebook revenue, revenue that blow a massive hole in the Markus Dohle fantasy that ebooks comprise only 20% of the book market.
And no, Dohle is no longer the industry Emperor he once was, but it was as recently as last May, 2023, that he was still telling anyone who would listen that the publishing industry was locked into his fantasy 80:20 print-digital split.
That $620 million of course before we even think about à la carte sales from these same self-publishers and small presses, and before we think about the APub sales, whose chart positions strongly indicate will amount to much more than the KU pot numbers.
And of course it is before we consider the revenues for self-publishers and small presses from à la carte and subscription ebooks on rival platforms like Apple, Google Play, Kobo, Scribd and far too many others to mention.
Again, we can only speculate as to these numbers, but we can safely say they will collectively equal more than the known KU payout numbers, and that brings us back to the AAP Statshot numbers.
$300 million each quarter goes uncounted
Because the AAP is reporting $255.6 million in Q1 mainstream publisher revenue, which means if we allow the KU pot payout for Q1 ($151.9) to reflect 50% of the APub, small press and self-pub revenue for that period, we are looking at more than $300 million in ebook cash that is going uncounted by the AAP and unreported by the industry. Just in Q1.
And extrapolating across the year, we are therefore looking at circa $1.2 billion in uncounted ebook revenues, while the same extrapolation would put the expected AAP trade report to be circa $1.02 billion. Higher if we factor in the $336.5 million coming in from education and religious publishing
Oh, and that 1.5% decline in trade ebook revenues as reported by the AAP for Q1 compared to Q1 2023?
In Q1 2023 KU paid out $138.6 million, meaning an increase of 9.6% year on year.
Don’t tell Markus Dohle!
This post first appeared on TNPS LinkedIn.
