Digital Census: 'self-published writers to grow e-book market share'

Self-published writers and digital only publishers will continue to grow their share of the digital content market while traditional publishers over-price e-books, according to early results of the FutureBook Census, launched ahead of this year’s FutureBook Conference, taking place on 2nd December. The annual tracker takes a measure of how the publishing sector is responding to the challenges of its ongoing digital transformation with the results released in full at the FutureBook Conference.

When asked what was most likely to happen over the next five years, respondents ranked independent authors growing marketshare ahead of e-book migration to mobiles and the development of e-books into multimedia products. Two-thirds of respondents also described the shift back to full-agency pricing among the bigger publishing groups as “good news for Amazon, self-published authors and digital-only publishers”. The price of e-books was also selected by many respondents as a reason for the current slowdown in e-book business.

However, there remains plenty of optimism about the ongoing transformation, with a majority of respondents convinced that the rise of digital will ultimately grow the overall book market. There was also further evidence of how the digital content market was evolving with audiobook downloads second only to e-books as the fastest growing digital content sector.

The survey will close on 21st October and can be completed here. To book tickets to this year’s FutureBook Conference visit the conference website here.