Mark Coker's 2017 Smashwords Survey of eBook Trends and Data

Hello and welcome to the Focused on Story Blog!

Focused on Story Blog by J.Q. Rose

Taking a break this week, but I am popping in here to share an important report on e-book sales from Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords. He does a survey every year finding the trends and insights in the e-book sales aggregated across the Smashwords distribution network.

Mark cautions to use a large amount of skepticism while reading the report.

I came away with the understanding that pre-orders are a huge advantage in bumping up sales for new books. He offers results on the data collected on box sales, series, pricing, top genres, and more!

Mark said,
"Here are some of the questions we seek to answer:

• What are the top fiction and non-fiction categories?
• What romance categories perform the best? 
• How do box sets perform, and which types of box set perform the best?
• Do authors who release ebooks as preorders sell more books overall?
• How do preorder adoption rates differ across genres (New!!) 
• What percentage of overall sales in each genre for new titles go to books released as preorders (New!)
• What are the pricing sweet spots for full-length fiction to maximize both readership and author earnings?
• Do longer books still sell better?
• Does FREE still work, and what about free series starters?
• Do series books sell better than standalone books, and if so, by how much?

And here you go, the Smashwords Survey!"

Click here for the 2017 Smashwords Survey of Ebook Trends and Data 

from Mark Coker of Smashwords, Inc.

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