A new report from Bowker counts more than 235,000 print and digital self-published titles being released annually in the United States.
You can keep track of this marketplace every week through our Self-Published Bestsellers List. Compared to 2006 figures, this year marked a 287 percent increase for the booming section of the publishing industry. At the same time, the marketplace is dominated by four companies: CreateSpace, Smashwords, Author Solutions and Lulu.
Here’s more from the report: “In 2011, CreateSpace dominated the print segment, supporting the creation of 58,412 titles (39 percent of self-published print books). Smashwords topped the e-book producers with 40,608 titles (nearly 47 percent of total self-published e-books). The combined divisions of Author Solutions (part of Penguin Group) produced a total of 47,094 titles and Lulu Enterprises checks in with 38,005 titles. The Bowker analysis shows that beyond these four players, no company has more than 10 percent of market share.”
We discussed the report on the Morning Media Menu today. Press play below to listen…
During the show, TVNewser senior editor Alex Weprin added this thought: “Anytime a market is saturated like that, it reminds me of when YouTube first came out. There were a handful of really great YouTube shows. Ze Frank sticks out in my head. What he did online, nobody had seen that before. But for every Ze Frank, there was some guy sitting in the dark room rambling on about the movie he saw last week. The eBook market might be seeing the same thing that YouTube saw–a flood of original content, but the challenge is sorting the good from the crap … Anytime you’ve got that much content coming out, it’s hard to stand out.”