Bowker Report: Self Publishing Trend Shows Robust Growth With Ebooks Dominating

Posted on October 27, 2012

In its new report on self-publishing trends Bowker reports that the number of self-published books produced each year has increased by 287% since 2006. Bowker Books In Print and Bowker Identifier Services performed the analysis.

Bowker says in a statement that the biggest growth self-publishing is in ebooks, not print. It also found that three of the biggest self-publishing entities produce most of the books. The biggest players in the field are CreateSpace which is owned by Amazon.com (produced 39% of self-published print books in 2011), Smashwords (with close to 47% percent of total self-published ebooks), and Author Solutions, which is owned by Penguin Group. Author Solutions imprints produced 47,094 titles. Lulu Enterprises produced 38,005 titles during the same time period.

Beat Barblan, Director of Identifier Services for Bowker, explained the change in the self publishing industry: "It's provided everyone who has a story to tell with a method for sharing it and leveled the playing field to an unprecedented degree. This is no longer just vanity presses at work - self-publishing is out of the dark corners and making its way into the mainstream. Notable success stories include a number of self-published authors landing their titles onto the prestigious New York Times bestseller list for ebook fiction."

Bowker reports that in 2011 small presses that produce 10 or fewer books still accounted for 34,107 self-published titles (21,256 print and 12,851 e-books). -Small presses continue to produce print books; that number increased more than 74% in the five year period between 2006 and 2011.