It’s no great secret that the world of publishing is changing. What is a secret is how much. Is it changing a lot? Has most of the change already happened? What does the future look like?
Hugh Howey released a report on author earnings today, and while I haven’t had time to absorb all the data it looks like a useful and surprising glimpse into the often opaque world of author earnings.
Most self-published authors are, on average, earning more money on fewer books… If I had to guess what the future holds, I would say that the world of literature has its brightest days still ahead.
I’m sure there will be a lot of talk about this online (it’s already started here and here and here, among many other examples), but it’s great that the report was done at all, and that it is posted alongside the data used to produce it. True, Howey is himself the kind of outlier that can skew results and these numbers are from Amazon only, but the report still paints a very interesting picture of how indie publishing is changing.
J.R. Johnson 