Self-Published Ebooks Outselling Big Publishing Houses

This one blows my mind. Yesterday Forbes published an article online called Which Publishers are the Best at Selling Ebooks in 2013. Read the article. It’s great. They plan on keeping tally of all the books sold on a weekly basis and seeing which company had the most selling and best selling ebooks for each quarter of 2013. A great idea, again read the article.

The thing that “blew my mind” here was that self-published books were number 4 on their of the list of publishers who had top 25 sellers. Self-published books had the 2 top selling ebooks already in the week measured.

This seems to point to the idea that the field is leveling. The gatekeepers are not making all the money. Self-published ebooks can and are out selling large publishing house best sellers. That is stunning. Self- publishing has never done this, in this way. For the first time in history a single author can compete in this industry. Self-published books appeared in the top 25 selling spots 22 times! These self published books, if you look at the list, aren’t the best selling self published books of old. They are not accompanied by late night infomercials. These are honest pieces of fiction.

This has been a long time in coming, but it is stark, in my opinion. You have large publishing houses out there backing their books with everything they got, and small little self-published books are doing better with word of mouth. Digital Book World is reporting that one of the top 2 best selling self-published authors sold over 85,000 books in 10 days.

Is it still better to go with a big publishing house where ebooks are concerned? The norm is changing. The day will come when, I believe, this list will be dominated by self-published books and indie books publishers. We are seeing the first steps. In the mean time, keep up with these sales.