Indie Author SnapShot: Shelf Life in a Digital Age

In traditional publishing, there is a line of thought which suggests that all books have a very limited shelf life. It is well known that most publishers will campaign heavily, push their new releases onto as many bookstore shelves as possible - and then withdraw the less successful titles after a relatively short window of exposure. Some titles will do very well, and others will fade into obscurity.

Much of this pattern is dictated by the limited space available on the shelves of retailers, as well as the cost of maintaining warehouses full of unsold books. Being a traditional publisher isn't just about selling books, it's also about managing inventory.

Today's indie publishing market, however, is different. It is a market made possible largely due to online sales - bypassing the physical storefronts over which the traditional publishers had a near monopoly. Even the paperback market has been reinvented, with the arrival of affordable, print-on-demand capabilities. Just how different this new indie market is becomes apparent once rankings and sales data are interrogated.

Exploring the data extracted from the one-day snapshot of the indie fantasy scene described under earlier posts, a couple of trends become apparent. One, is that while the very top-selling indie titles do appear to have a limited window for peak sales - that window is measured in months not weeks. The top-selling titles will peak in earnings shortly after release, and gradually lose that added earning potential - but will do so over the course of the next two years. Without the limitations of physical shelf space, the marketability of "new" titles becomes much longer.

Moreover, the sales potential for most indie books appears to be fairly consistent in the span between two to five years after release. Unlike a traditional publisher, which will seek to optimize earnings from a sales portfolio spanning many authors, an indie author/publisher will continue to promote their backlog of books for years to come - encouraging read-through across their entire portfolio. The result is a longer "shelf life" for books which in the brick-and-mortar world of book sales might easily have been forgotten.

Taken in total, it should be evident that the indie author scene represents a different business model from traditional publishing. It is a model based on maximizing the long-term earnings of an author's entire suite of books, not merely the short term opportunities afforded by the shelf space of a physical retailer.