ebooks vs. print books: survey of epublishers who went to print

From what I've been hearing on the publisher email lists and forums, business is good for the reputable, royalty-paying epublishers. The Amazon.com Kindle has generated quite a buzz on the Internet. Sales are brisk at such ebook distributors as eReader.com, Fictionwise, Sony Connect, etc. Many epublishers have taken their titles to print, but I wondered if ebook sales still accounted for a large percentage of their sales revenue.

So earlier this month, I created a survey to get an overview of the current state of epublishing, posted the survey in the various publisher forums and a number of small press publishers responded. Here are the questions I sent to the publishers:

1. What is the name of your company? What are the names of your Imprints, if any.
    
2. When was your company established?

3. Were you an epublisher or print publishing house when your company was established?

4.  When did you go to print?
 a. Did you go POD or with print runs initially?
 b. If POD initially, was it to keep inventory reasonable, because POD is less costly than 2000 book print runs, lack of storage space or other reasons?

5. Did you have print runs of 500 books or more for any of your titles in 2007?

6. Would you agree or disagree with the following statement:
  Most epublishers who also publish in print still earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales.

Survey of epublishers who went to print

Trace Edward Zaber, Owner/Editorial Director/Creative Director for Amber Quill Press, LLC responded to the survey. Established 2002 and went ebook and POD print simultaneously from inception. Imprints are Amber Heat (Erotica) and Amber Allure (GLBT Fiction and Erotica).
 
Mr. Zaber disagreed that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales. He said, "it truly all depends on the title. For example, some books that sell a large amount of units in electronic versions may sell very few in paperback. Meanwhile, some of our titles that have sold a handful of units in electronic version, have sold hundreds of units in paperback. It all depends on the genre, the "customer/fan base" of any particular author, the author's promotional efforts, etc."
http://www.amberquill.com/

Kathryn Struck, Publisher of Awe-Struck E-Books, Inc. responded to the survey. Established 1998 as an epublisher. Imprint: Earthling Press. Went POD in 2001. Ms. Struck said, "We do have over half of our e-book inventory in print now--140 books or so."

Regarding print runs, she said, "We have some textbook work that we do print runs for--up to a thousand copies. ...we print a Composition textbook for the local community college and ad a run of 550 this year. We were commissioned to publish a commemorative book, and we printed 1,000 of those in hard cover."

She agreed that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales and said, "...each year we sell more and more print books."
http://www.awe-struck.net/

J. Ellen Smith, Publisher/Managing Editor of Champagne Books responded to the survey. Established 2005 as an epublisher. Initially went with small print runs in 2006 and switched to POD as a business decision to reduce costs and to increase their web and store presence.

Ms. Smith agreed that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales
and indicated most of their sales come from major third party vendors such as Fictionwise.
http://www.champagnebooks.com/

Gwen Gades, Publisher of Dragon Moon Press responded to the survey. Established late 1993 solely as a print publisher. Initially went with print runs and then added ebooks in 2005. Dragon Moon Press is now an imprint of Hades Publications, along with EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy and Tesseracts.

Regarding 500-book print runs, Ms. Gades wrote, "We regularly do whatever makes financial sense - whether that's print 100 or print 1000's. We do both and everything in between."
http://www.dragonmoonpress.com/

Joan McNulty Pulver, Acquisitions/Personnel Director & Senior Fantasy Editor for ePress-online, Inc. responded to the survey. Established in 2000, incorporated in 2007, and started as an epublisher (well, as a writing group actually. Read the About Us page at their web site) and went POD in 2004-2005.

Ms. Pulver agreed that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales and indicated they currently have more ebook sales than print.
http://www.epress-online.com/

Daniel J. Reitz, Sr., Publisher of Mundania Press LLC, responded to the survey. Established 2002 as a print publisher, but also offers ebooks. Imprints include Phaze Books and New Classics Press. Mundania Press has offered both print runs and POD since inception and also had print runs of 500 books or more in 2007.

Regarding the statement that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales, Mr. Reitz wrote, "Varies. ...It's more like 65-75% print, the remainder for ebooks."
http://www.mundania.com/

Dindy Robinson, Publisher of Swimming Kangaroo Books. Established 2006 as an epublisher and went POD early on. Regarding print runs, Ms. Robinson wrote, "Yes, we have 1000 each of our upcoming children's books, Olive the Little Woolly Bugger and Olive and the Big Pond."

Regarding the statement that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales, Ms. Robinson said, "I would agree that this holds true for most epubs, but not for us. In fact we now consider ourselves to be an independent print publisher that also offers books in eformat."
http://www.swimmingkangaroo.com/

Rhonda Penders, Editor-in-Chief for The Wild Rose Press responded to the survey. Established 2006 and went ebook and POD print simultaneously from inception. They have 14 separate lines such as White Rose (inspirational), Black Rose (dark paranormal), etc.

Ms. Penders agrees that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales.
http://www.thewildrosepress.com/

Janet Musick, Publisher of Tigress Press, LLC responded to the survey. Established 2003. Tigress Press was initially a print publishing house and tried both print runs and POD. Currently prints POD. Added ebooks in 2006. Ms. Musick disagreed that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales stating the ratio is probably 55% print, 45% e-book for her house.
http://www.tigresspress.com/

Dave A. Law, Chairman, Virtual Tales responded to the survey. Established 2005 as an epublisher, started POD summer 2007 and said, "at the moment print adds a lot to our bottom line."
http://www.virtualtales.com

Sandy Cummins, Publisher of Writers Exchange E-Publishing responded to the survey. Established in 2000 and went POD in 2005. Ms. Cummins agreed with the statement that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales, saying "Definitely - I earn more than that in electronic sales."
http://www.writers-exchange.com/epublishing/

Arline Chase, Publisher of Write Words, Inc. Established 1998 as an epublisher and went POD around 2000. Imprints are ebooksonthe.net and Cambridge Books (print). Ms. Chase agrees that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales, but she is planning to "do more with print."
http://www.ebooksonthe.net/

Elizabeth Burton, Acquisitions Editor for Zumaya Publications responded to the survey. The original Zumaya Publications was born in 1999 in British Columbia. [Incorporated in Texas in 2006] and went ebook and POD print simultaneously from the beginning. These days small print runs of 20-200 copies aren't unusual as their business has expanded to include booksellers and other retail vendors.

Imprints include Zumaya Embraces for romance and women's fiction, Zumaya Otherworlds for SF/F, Zumaya Enigma for mystery/suspense/thriller and our GLBT line, Zumaya Boundless. They hope to add a YA/middle grade imprint in 2008.

Zumaya went POD not only to keep costs down, but equally important, they saw "the appalling waste that is the traditional, print-run business model and refused to be a part of it" as well as the impact on the environment."

When responding to the question regarding 500-book print runs, Ms. Burton wrote, "The point is that the vocabulary of the traditional system is irrelevant to digital publishing. The requirement of a minimum print run imposed by certain professional writers' organizations has no basis in logic; it's an emotional reaction to a perceived threat to the status quo. How does it make sense to print 500 copies of a book just to say you did, then perhaps end up remaindering half of them? I've yet to have someone explain to me why that's more "professional" than actually selling, and being paid for, 500 copies printed one, five or ten at a time."

Regarding the statement that most epublishers earn 60-70% of their revenue from ebook sales, Ms. Burton had this to say, "To be honest, I don't think there's any way to verify that statistic, and I've always agreed with Disraeli (as alleged by Mark Twain) about those. Which books sell and in what format is directly connected to how and where and how often the books are marketed, and what the readers are most interested in buying. We do both on an equal footing, but the majority of our authors are NOT ebook oriented. They aren't into Yahoo Group participation, or finding ebook review venues. As a result, our print sales invariably out do our ebook sales collectively. However, individual books may do much better in ebook than in print--and vice versa.

"If an epublisher is serious about doing print books, and markets accordingly, they may do just as well with those as they do with their ebooks. If they only offer them as a sideline, with all or most of their promotion efforts targeted to their ebooks, then the percentage you cite probably would be close."
http://www.zumayapublications.com/
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My thanks to all the publishers who took time from their busy schedules to respond to the survey.

Many publishers have book sales this time of year. Be sure to check out their web sites and try a few ebooks.

You'll find more interviews with small press publishers in the current issue of Voice in the Dark newsletter.
http://www.mysteryfiction.net/Voiceinthedark.html

Visit TeleRead for news and views on e-books, publishing and related topics.
http://www.teleread.org/blog/

Links of possible interest:
http://www.epicauthors.com/
http://www.hipiers.com/publishing.html
http://www.sff.net/people/Lida.Quillen/epub.html
http://www.twilighttimesbooks.com/freebies.html
http://www.twilighttimesbooks.com/cybershoppe/ebook_devices.html

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Lida E. Quillen is the publisher of Twilight Times Books and Paladin Timeless Books as well as Twilight Times ezine, Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and Web Mystery Magazine.
http://twilighttimesbooks.com