Book publishers don’t often share much information about their digital revenues, but Naperville, Ill.-based independent publisher Sourcebooks reports some good news, including nearly 800 percent growth in e-book revenues in 2011.
The mid-sized Sourcebooks publishes over 300 books a year in a variety of categories, including nonfiction, historical fiction and romance, children’s and gift books. The publisher shared its 2011 results on its blog. Sourcebooks is a privately owned company and does not report its revenues, but says “decline of print book sales looks modest and increase in e-book sales looks incredibly strong.”
E-books now make up 28 percent of Sourcebooks’ revenues. That percentage is a bit higher than at big-six publishers like Random House and Hachette, which most recently reported that e-books make up around 20 percent of their revenues.
Sourcebooks’ e-book unit sales increased 138 percent the week between Christmas and New Year’s, compared to 2010.
The company also noted a shift in retailer market share for its e-books. For Sourcebooks titles, “Barnes & Noble’s Nook steadily gained share in the fourth quarter and posted amazing growth during December and the week of Christmas” — Sourcebooks sales on the Nook platform were up 437 percent over last year.
I’ve updated our Publishers’ Digital Revenues chart with the new data from Sourcebooks.
Interesting publisher breakdown of eBook revenue:
Of course ebook revenue is growing, digital music revenue grew in the triple digits in the early days as well. I wish someone would detail what effect they have on overall revenues. Thanks for breaking out the revenue chart though, that’s great. It is good to see that as ebook publishers play with pricing, at least some are not curbing digital sales too much. I wrote a post about that:
http://digitalpennies.com/2011/12/28/are-publishers-establishing-sound-e-book-prices-or-just-screwing-themselves/