50% of fiction books sold are ebook at 1 Big Publisher (according to a Big 6 executive)

One Big Six executive told me that ebook sales in their shop had reached the mid-30s as a percentage of units sold. That broke down to about 50% of fiction units and 25% of non-fiction.

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As Maryn says, that's about 50% of fiction sales for just one publisher; and judging from the article you quote, the Big Six executive who made that claim was talking about sales from the publisher's own online shop. I'd be interested to know how their sales break down between print and e-editions when sold from Amazon, for example; and when looking at sales made from physical bookshops.

There's also the issue of genre. Some genres--erotica is the obvious one--were made to sell as easily-downloadable electronic editions; other genres--literary fiction being the most obvious to me--have a readership which seems to prefer print editions.

In order to be meaningful, statistics need context.

EbookReader said:

But for the "substantial" but not Big 6, I'm guessing he's refering to Harlequin, unit sales for fiction has reached "well beyond 50% digital."

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Which is not surprising since Harlequin has a digital-first imprint (Carina Press). Again, context is everything.

EbookReader said:

You're right. At least at one Big 6 Publisher, half of their fiction units sold are now ebooks. But that doesn't mean it is the same for the other 5 Big Publishers.

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It doesn't mean that it isn't "the same for the other 5 Big Publishers", though, either. All it means is that this one bloke--an unnamed executive at an unnamed press--claims that under a very specific set of circumstances, around 50% of fiction sales are made in e-format.

But for the "substantial" but not Big 6, I'm guessing he's refering to Harlequin, unit sales for fiction has reached "well beyond 50% digital."

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Why do you think he's referring to Harlequin? What are your reasons for thinking this? What other presses could it mean, and why have you excluded them as possibilities?

EbookReader said:

Is it from their online "shop" though?

or he using "shop" as a word to describe something else (total unit sales of book for his "company" (aka shop)

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In the article you linked to, Mr Shatzkin wrote, "One Big Six executive told me that ebook sales in their shop". Executives at major publishing houses don't usually talk about their publishing houses as "shops". They refer to them as "houses" or "imprints", but not as "shops". They do, however, refer to their shops as "shops".

He started of the blog post with:

....."by the time we got to the point when more than a third of unit sales for major houses had gone digital — and perhaps more than half for fiction

.........

"we have reached that level of ebook uptake."

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That was Mr Shatzkin talking there: not the unnamed Big Six executive. And if you read the article carefully you'll see that he was referring to how he imagined he'd feel when and if we reached that point. You're taking his words slightly out of context here.

And this is Mike Shatzkin here, would he use data from an online shop of a Major Publisher?

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He's not using data from anywhere. He's reporting a discussion he had with the Mystery Executive. He gives a big clue about that when he writes,

One Big Six executive told me

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My bold.

EBR, between your username and your 17 post history, I kind of get the impression that you think we need to be convinced that ebooks are surging to be a major factor in the publishing industry.

We know that.

Did you want to have discussion about something?

Perks said:

EBR, between your username and your 17 post history, I kind of get the impression that you think we need to be convinced that ebooks are surging to be a major factor in the publishing industry.

We know that.

Did you want to have discussion about something?

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OP,


you're getting a bit of flack for the double-edged fact you are using some questionable or shoddy facts and that you appear in fact to be using them to attack a straw man--nobody has said e-pubbing is not growing, or maintained that it was some backwater.

If you wanted to discuss whether this meant it was becoming a more practical model for self-pubbing or the houses would eventually control e-pubbing, or whatever else, fine, but this seems to be an agenda piece to validate something nobody has really said is invalid.