Which online retailers do the best job of helping sell your eBooks?

I thought I would share some potentially interesting information about the effectiveness of various online stores in driving eBook sales, based on my personal experience over the past months.

If you’re not a regular reader of OJR, last summer I wrote about my first effort in eBook self-publishing. I’m a big believer in eBooks because I see them as a medium where readers have proven that they are willing, even eager, to pay for content. Forget about chasing pennies from paywalls. Go where your readers are buying eBooks by the millions, instead.

Newspaper publishers have been publishing books for decades, but the printing and distribution costs have limited those efforts to only the most highly popular subjects, such as national championships by the local sports team and blockbuster investigative works. But eBooks lower the cost of production and distribution substantially. Now, many more long-form investigative works, ongoing columns and popular long-standing can be converted to eBooks, with good profit potential.

Adding eBooks to your repertoire provides you another revenue path to supplement advertising, underwriting or whatever else you’re using to bring in revenue today. I’d encourage publishers to look beyond repurposed content, and consider how original eBook content might fit within your news product mix. Find the right story, and the demand is there. From paying readers this time.

If you’re interested in getting started with eBooks, please click into our archives and take a look at my three-part introduction to eBook publishing. Today, I’m going to refine my original advice by letting you know what I’ve learned from selling eBooks through several popular online bookstores.

When I started, I submitted my eBook to four retailers that would accept works from first-time self-publishers: Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble and Google Books. I linked to all four stores when marketing my eBook to the readers of one of my websites. (The book was a collection of stories from that site, re-edited and with a few additional chapters.) I signed up for the various retailers’ affiliate programs, not only so that I could make a few extra cents from each sale I referred, but also so I could get some information about how many sales were being driven by me, through my website, and how many were bring driven by links on the retailers’ stores.

The results humbled me. After the first day or two, the number of sales I referred dropped to a small fraction of the overall sales of the books – less than 10 percent. Which is great – exactly what you’d want to see. That shows that eBook publishing can expand your market, and bring your work to an audience and customers you’re not already reaching.

But I also found that the retailer-driven sales I was seeing were far from uniformly distributed. Within a month, it was clear that almost all of my sales were coming from just two stores – Amazon and Apple. So I did some clicking around to see if I could find out why.

One of my favorite nuggets of advice for any business person is to put yourself in the customer’s position and take note of what you see and how you’re treated. So that’s what I did. I went into each store as a customer and tried to find my book. The easy way to do that would be to use the stores’ search functions, and those turned up my book almost instantly.

But anyone who’d be searching for the exact title of my book would have heard it already. If my book was to reach a new audience that wasn’t already familiar with my work, those readers would have to find my title by browsing through the site – not by searching.

That’s where I found my explanation. Google Books has little presence on the Web, and generated almost no sales for my book. (Google has no affiliate program that I found, but when I stopped linking to the Google Books version of the book from my website, sales dropped to near zero.) Browsing through Google Books’ homepage really didn’t get me anywhere. Like Google itself, this is a search-driven interface.

Barnes and Noble bills itself as the world’s largest bookstore. And while Barnes and Noble sells millions of eBooks, it banishes self-published authors into a virtual ghetto called “Pub It!” Titles published through the Pub It! store aren’t displayed in BN.com’s category bestseller lists, and unless a reader decides to click the Pub It! link on BN.com, he or she would never find my book from browsing the site. Again, once I stopped linking to the Barnes and Noble version of the eBook from my website, sales through BN.com dropped to near zero.

It was a different story on Apple and Amazon, neither of which discriminate against self-published books in their listings. The initial push from orders from readers of my website helped move the book onto the bestseller lists in the Travel category in Amazon’s Kindle store and on Apple’s iBooks store. That made it easy to find for readers browsing through both retailers’ stores. Additional sales from browsing readers also helped move the book up the charts, and my book topped out at number 2 in the Travel category on iBooks. (Apple’s iBooks store offers significantly fewer titles than Amazon’s Kindle store, meaning there’s less competition to get onto the bestseller lists for publishers who can make it through Apple’s stricter tech standards for submitting a new title. But still… number 2! I’ll take that.)

Unfortunately on Apple, you need to stay on those category bestseller lists to keep moving product. Apple lacks the recommendation features readers find on Amazon, meaning that once you drop off the bestseller lists, there’s no easy way to browse to your book any longer. So, yep, even though I still link to Apple, sales have dropped to just a few copies a week now.

So, as an independent eBook publisher, I say, thank goodness for Amazon. With Amazon’s recommendation engine pushing my title to readers of books similar to mine, sales of my book on Amazon have remained healthy four months after it debuted. And Amazon offers bestseller lists in many different subcategories that drill down much deeper than “Travel,” allowing would-be customers to browse to my book even after it has dropped down the main Travel bestseller list. Amazon mixes eBooks and print books in category bestseller lists, too, exposing my book to readers who don’t think to look exclusively for eBooks, too. That gives it a sales edge over Apple, which sells only eBooks.

(Of course, Apple has its own advantage, since it has now barred direct sales of books on iOS devices through Amazon’s Kindle app. If you want to buy an eBook through an iOS app, you’re buying an eBook through the iBooks store. Of course, the workaround is to just use the browser and go to Amazon.com. That’s what I do.)

Now, will my experience apply to you? I don’t know. But I hope that this might help you prioritize where to focus your energy in publishing your first eBooks. My advice is… make Amazon your top priority. Getting on Apple can be worth the effort, too, at least in the short term. Once you have an Apple-compliant ePub file, it’s really not much extra effort to go ahead and submit it to Barnes and Noble or Google. (Though you’ll have to wait much longer to show up on Google – nearly two weeks in my case. Barnes and Noble had me up the next day.) But don’t expect much from those stores.

Looking forward, this experience convinced me that I don’t even want to consider buying a Nook. For eBook reading, I’m going all-in on Kindle. Why? Perhaps Barnes and Noble is trying to protect its relationship with the print publishers that stock its chain of brick-and-mortar bookstores by minimizing exposure for independent titles. But I want to see the full universe of available eBook titles when I go shopping for books online. And I want to be able to browse deeply into many various subjects to find title that might appeal to me.

My experience as a publisher and a consumer of eBooks shows me that Amazon is doing the best job of providing that now, by far. Which leads me to suspect that other consumers will feel the same way, ultimately powering Amazon to a dominant position in eBook and reader sales. That’s something for publishers to be thinking about.

One more option for self-published journalists: Talking with Will Bunch about Kindle Singles

Here’s one more reason why you need to be looking at eBooks as part of your “I’m-a-journalist-who-needs-to-make-money” career strategy.

Kindle Singles.

Kindle Singles is Amazon.com’s effort to promote shorter-length eBooks, between 5,000 and 30,000 words. Prices are low, too – Amazon requires that eBooks selected for the Kindle Singles program be listed between 99 cents and $4.99. However, all titles listed under Kindle Singles are eligible for a 70 percent commission to authors instead of the 30 percent commission it offers for titles priced under $2.99.

(By the way, if you haven’t read our series on publishing eBooks, you might want to start there before reading more about the Kindle Singles program.)

With Kindle Singles, Amazon’s using the flexibility of the eBook medium to target stories whose natural length falls in the gap between magazine articles and books:

“We’re looking for compelling ideas expressed at their natural length–writing that doesn’t easily fall into the conventional space limitations of magazines or print books…. A Kindle Single can be on any topic. So far we’ve posted fiction, essays, memoirs, reporting, personal narratives, and profiles, and we’re expanding our selection every week. We’re looking for high-quality writing, fresh and original ideas, and well-executed stories in all genres and subjects.”

But can Amazon create a market for this content? To get a first-person perspective on publishing a Kindle Single title, I emailed Will Bunch, who recently published October 1, 2011: The Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge about a pivotal day in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“As a writer, it’s always exciting to experiment,” Bunch replied. “Although I was pleased with my 2010 book about the rise of the Tea Party, The Backlash, it was hard to get people’s attention with a $16-20 hardcover book with so much good free and immediate writing on the same topic on the Internet. I thought with the Kindle Single I could produce a piece of writing that would come at the right time (when Occupy Wall Street was still at the top of the news) at the right length (14,500 words) at the right price (99 cents, in the spirit of the 99 percent.)”

Anyone who publishes an eBook on the Kindle platform can request to have his or her title considered as a Kindle Single. You can’t submit excerpts of a larger work, or republished work. Amazon’s also not now accepting “how-to manuals, public domain works, reference books, travel guides, or children’s books” as Kindle Singles, either. That doesn’t mean you can’t sell those items in the Kindle Store. It’s just that you won’t get the promotional boost of being listed on the Kindle Singles pages, and if you price under $2.99, you’ll be stuck with the 30% commission rate.

Kindle Singles also provides eBook publishers the opportunity to work with publication agents, a rarity for solo publishers in the eBook world. As an established print author, Bunch’s literary agent made the initial contact with Amazon, but once Amazon agreed to include Bunch in Kindle Singles, he got the chance to work with Kindle Singles editor David Blum to focus the end product.

Don’t expect Amazon to do all the work, though. In my experience, Amazon is the best eBook retailer in “suggested sales,” pushing your titles in front of consumers who have bought similar works. But to take full advantage of Amazon’s social recommendation system, you need to launch your title with a big push to generate those initial sales. So how did Bunch launch “Battle of the Brooklyn Bridge”?

“I don’t think it’s much different than regular books,” Bunch replied. “Become a presence on social networks, and use blogs intelligently – TV and radio is great if you have the right subject. You have to compensate for the fact that you won’t likely get traditional book reviews – but there are fewer and fewer reviews of conventional books anyway!”

Bunch introduced the eBook to readers on his blog and Twitter account, as well as in a post he wrote on Huffington Post. Additional links came from liberal blogs Firedoglake and Eschaton, and Bunch also made appearances promoting the book on radio and Keith Olbermann’s TV show. The blitz helped push Bunch’s book into the top 100 for all Kindle titles. Now, Bunch is trying to build on that momentum by reaching out to the progressive community online.

“One of my ambitions is to chronicle current events and politics in a writerly fashion – with a point of view, but not necessarily the kind of polemic that dominates the political best seller,” he said.

So is a Kindle Single a worthwhile option for other journalists?

“I think narratives and essays or meditations on topics that don’t merit a full-length book work well, and of course short stories for fiction writers,” Bunch replied. “Don’t have grandiose expectations — if you find the right publisher (like Amazon) you may earn as much as a major magazine article, but fortune is a longshot, fame not quite as much.”

Will he write a Kindle Single again?

“You bet. One benefit of the Kindle Single is that it’s a good format for experimentation; for example, I’ve long had an interest in other topics outside of politics, such as sports, and this might be the best way to take a risk with a new direction.”

Apps vs. eBooks: Where can newsrooms and journalists make the most money?

How much time do you or your news organization spend developing apps? What’s your return on that investment, and by that I mean – how much money are you making on app sales and from direct advertising on those app platforms?

Now, how much are you spending on developing eBooks for your newsroom content? I’d be surprised to find a newsroom that’s spending even half of what its devoting to app development on eBooks. In fact, I have yet to find a major newsroom that devoted more than a token amount of time and money to eBook development. (If you’re in newsroom that is spending time building eBooks, please let me know. I’d love to tell your story on OJR.)

Here’s why you should consider amplifying your investment in eBook development. Here are the prices of the top 20 paid apps in the iOS app store, as of last night:

$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$2.99
$0.99
$0.99
$1.99
$1.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99

Now, here are the prices of the top 20 paid eBooks in Apple’s iBooks store, for comparison:

$9.99
$14.99
$12.99
$2.99
$12.99
$12.99
$0.99
$9.99
$12.99
$1.99
$12.99
$11.99
$14.99
$14.99
$12.99
$3.99
$14.99
$9.99
$12.99
$14.99

In which market would you rather try to make money?

Let’s sharpen the focus a bit. In the News category in the app store, most expensive paid app in the top 20 is Instapaper at $4.99. There is no News category in the iBooks store, but let’s use Politics & Current Events as the closest approximation. Of the top 20 paid eBooks in that category, 19 of the top 20 sell for $4.99 or more.

Clearly, the public is willing to – and does – pay more for content in eBooks than it does in apps. That fact should encourage any serious news business to take a serious look at eBooks.

But what about volume? That’s where I couldn’t find reliable data comparing sales in the app store versus sales of eBooks. But it’s clear from the pricing that a news organization would need to sell many times more apps than eBooks for apps to have better sales revenue, given the higher price points routinely supported in eBook stores.

There’s the possibility of ad revenue too, but I’ve yet to hear from any news organizations that are earning the several dollars per user on app ad revenue that they would need to in order to close the gap between app and eBook pricing. (And let’s not forget that a sharp businessperson could find a way to employ advertising in certain eBooks without killing consumer demand for the book, as well.)

And don’t forget the expense side. Outside development for both apps and eBooks can be expensive. But while writing an app can mean creating and compiling executable code, creating an eBook required no more tech skills than writing HTML then zipping some files. (Here’s our handy three-part do-it-yourself guide for publishing eBooks.) There’s no reason why a competent online publishing business – whether it be a large newsroom or a one-person shop, can’t publish eBooks in-house, keeping expenses to a minimum.

I’m not trying to dissuade you from developing apps – they can be an important part of your product mix in serving readers and customers. But I am trying to open your eyes to a paid content publishing option that too many news businesses are overlooking. If you’ve made a business case for app development, the business case for trying eBooks is much, much easier to make.

After all, apps are, literally, applications. They’re programs – the work of tech companies creating functionality for a market that wants to do something.

EBooks are content. They’re the work of content companies that create words and narratives for people who want information. Any special section, extended report or beloved series of 20,000 words or more than you create or have created for your newspaper or website can become an eBook. If you’re covering a geographic community, you should have an eBook guide to that community that you’re selling to travelers or people relocating to the area. If there’s a special event or sports team in your community that brings in visitors, you should publish a fresh edition of an eBook covering them each year. If you’re creating content, then why not leverage that content through the eBook market, as you do through the Web and other media?

In summary – eBooks sell for more than apps. They cost less to develop than apps. They’re content, not programming, so they’re a better match for the content companies in the news business.

So if you’re developing and marketing apps to expand your market, why aren’t you developing and marketing eBooks, too?