The thriving market for ebooks has prompted many authors to turn to Amazon Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) for book distribution. But with great sales opportunities come great pitfalls.
First, let’s examine just how lucrative the ebook publishing market may be today.
An early 2017 five-country, 15-retailer report from Author Earnings shows that Amazon.com owned a startling 65% of all ebook unit sales in those English-speaking countries including the USA. What’s more 64% of all ebook consumer dollars flowed through Amazon sales channels. These sales included titles sourced from the Big Five publishers, small presses, and indie authors. More than half of the indie authors in the study were enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited Full-Read Equivalent program (Kindle Select), which pays authors from a royalty pool based on how much of a book is read. Opting into the Select program automatically gives Amazon exclusive distribution rights.
Self-published authors, according to Author Earnings, are verifiably capturing at least 24%-34% of all ebook sales in each of the five English-language markets…
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