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Writer's Haven => Publisher's Office [Public] => Topic started by: LilyBLily on October 12, 2018, 06:39:53 AM

Title: New stats on Print Self-Publishing from Publisher's Weekly
Post by: LilyBLily on October 12, 2018, 06:39:53 AM
The article is here: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/78291-the-number-of-self-published-titles-cracked-1-million-in-2017.html?utm

It admits the stats can't take into account books not published with an ISBN.

Interesting, fun fact: It has stats for the number of books published by CreateSpace, Lulu, and Author Solutions.

My inference: Next year, because print is now under Amazon KDP instead of CS, none of the indie print stats from Amazon will be available. 
Title: Re: New stats on Print Self-Publishing from Publisher's Weekly
Post by: NathanBurrows on October 12, 2018, 07:15:33 AM
Regardless of whether or not Amazon make it available, it should be fairly straightforward for someone who knows what they're doing to scrape the data. If they're so inclined that is.
Title: Re: New stats on Print Self-Publishing from Publisher's Weekly
Post by: LilyBLily on October 12, 2018, 09:25:45 AM
Actually, since they're print books and those must have an ISBN and are trackable, I think my inference was incorrect. But it's interesting that the numbers on Lulu and Author Solutions have gone down.
Title: Re: New stats on Print Self-Publishing from Publisher's Weekly
Post by: Denise on October 12, 2018, 10:11:07 PM
That's interesting.

The only issue is that it doesn't take into account books published with ISBNs from other countries, since it's taking info from Bowker, so it's mostly US publishers (or authors with CreateSpace ISBNs, for example). Not sure if international ISBNs make a significant difference, though.



Title: Re: New stats on Print Self-Publishing from Publisher's Weekly
Post by: bardsandsages on October 17, 2018, 04:33:07 AM
That number is disingenuous because a lot of micro-presses and small presses used Createspace and their ISBNs. I should know, as I was one of them. I even have multiple titles where I have my own ISBN for use at Ingram, but just used the Amazon KDP ISBN for the Amazon print version. It also assumes that all of those ebook ISBNs are separate books from print. I suspect many of them also have print versions.