Amazon Top 100 Kindle Books - Indies versus Trads Sales Revisited, and Comparing with Hugh Howie’s 2014 Data

Recently, noted SF writer Hugh Howie released data developed by himself and a data analyst partner, utilizing Amazon data via a web “spider”, which can data mine publicly available internet data extremely quickly and efficiently.  While I haven’t had a chance to delve very deeply into their data (which I will do later, as they provided the base data to the public), I did do a quick check against some of my early Amazon Top 100 results (collected laboriously by hand, I might add J).  Those blogs of mine can be found under the general tiles “Amazon Top 100 Kindle Books”.  Hugh Howie’s can be found in the website “Author Earnings”.

Here’s my result for number of Indie vs Trad books in the Top 100, along with the new results reported by Hugh Howie.

Amazon Top 100, 2013	Total
Traditional	76
Indie	24
Grand Total	100

 Here are the numbers after removing the books that weren’t in the Mystery/Thriller, SFF, and Romance categories, to make them comparable to Hugh’s numbers (these are restated as percentages, rather than raw numbers).

Amazon Top 100, 2013	Total
Traditional	74
Indie	26
Grand Total	100

 Here’s Hugh Howie’s numbers, form a much larger sample (about 7000 Amazon genre books).

Hugh Howie’s Amazon snapshot, early 2014	Total
Traditional	65
Indie	35
Grand Total	100

 These are Hugh’s numbers restated, with a category called “Single-Author Publishers” grouped with Indies.

Hugh Howie’s Amazon snapshot, early 2014	Total
Traditional	53
Indie	47
Grand Total	100

 So, the Hugh Howie numbers are even more favorable to Indies than mine were, especially in the second case, where the single-author publishers are assumed to be Indies.   As I recall, a certain CEO of a major U.S. publisher was alarmed and disbelieving of the results that I blogged (on a Passive Voice discussion) – he must be apoplectic at Hugh’s results.

Anyway, why are the results different?

The first possibility is that a lot changed between the times that the two samples represent.  My Amazon Top 100 analysis was based on Amazon’s list of their top 100 books of 2013.  In a sense then, it could be thought of as representing the mid-point of the 2013 data, since it is an accumulation of data collected throughout the year.  Hugh’s analysis was from a snapshot in February 2014, if I recall correctly.  So, about 8 months passed between the mid-point of one sample and the time of the second.  In the current publishing world, a lot can change in 8 months, as we know.

The second possibility is that the traditionally published books in the top 100 were more consistently present in that list over a longer time period, whereas any particular Indie book spends less time in the top 100, to be replaced by a new Indie book.   Think of a baseball team that came in third place for 5 straight years, while the other teams cycled in and out of the pennant race.  In that case the consistent third place team might place higher than the rest in a theoretical five year season, though it never wins a pennant.

That hypothesis would imply that there is more “churn” in the Indie books than the Trads.  That could simply be because the Trad authors have had longer careers and therefore have a ready-made fan base that allows them to stick on the top of the list for a longer time.   Indies have a more experimental audience, so any particular book doesn’t stay at the top as long, though as a group they are very successful .  If that’s the case, the passage of time will tend to make the most popular Trad and Indie writers converge,  in this regard.  Hugh’s data collection might also make that a fairly easy hypothesis to test, via some longer term tracking.  That’s the nice thing about a reliable and robust dataset – you can test hypotheses against the evidence.

Hugh’s large sample analysis also noted some things that my small sample had noted.  Briefly:

·         Indies have higher reader review ratings/rankings, on average, than Trads.

·         The vast majority of top-selling books, Trad or Indie, are in the general categories of Mystery/Suspense/Thriller, Science Fiction/Fantasy, and Romance.

·         Indies are at lower price points than Trads.

·         Assuming the usual royalty structures for Indies vs Trads, Indies can more than make up the difference in price, yielding equal or greater earnings for the writer.

I might say more later, but now I’m off to have pizza and wine with my favorite writer J.