Good News for Self-Published Writers and for writers in general!

The growth of the eBook market has not even begun to slow down, which means that the pool of potential buyers for self-published books is growing faster than ever. Of course, so is the number of available eBooks, but it is still time to catch the wave and get a book out there.

Let’s have a look at the numbers.

Until 2006, eBooks were an item reserved to a select few technologically savvy readers. The rise of eBooks slowly began in 2006 to reach a global annual revenue of $3.2 billion this year. Yet, according to a new research by Juniper Research, annual revenues from eBooks delivered to portable devices will grow to $9.7 billion by 2016. They attribute this robust growth to the increasing penetration of eReaders and tablet devices in households.

According to Juniper Research report, the increased and increasing demand for tablets will generate nearly 30% of all eBook downloads by 2016, even more so as eBook access on these devices has already been boosted by the launch of leading brand bookstore applications, such as Apple’s iBookStore and Amazon’s Kindle. AS per that report and today’s data, smartphones are not likely to become an eReader of choice, except maybe in Japan where mangas are highly popular and well suited to smartphones. Smartphones are, however, on their way to become the “plan b” eReader as storefront operators are seeking to enable synchronized eBook content across multiple devices to enable users to continue reading their book on their smartphone when their eReader/tablet is unavailable.

So, the market for eBooks is undoubtedly growing, and growing fast. For self-published writers, this is good news. The success of well known self-published authors such as Joe Konrath, Amanda Hocking or John Locke was due in part to the fact that they caught the eBook wave at the beginning of its rise and were partly carried up by the wave.

Now the second wave is on the horizon, due to the growth in eReaders devices. So it is the perfect time for self-published writers to dive in the book market pool and catch the wave before it peaks.

Publishers have also caught on with the unavoidability of eBooks and rumors that no one will ever read a book on a screen, popular back a few years ago, are now being laughed at. So, this time, publishers are diving as well, and they have equipment and stock that self-published writers sorely lack, so this time, the competition will be more aggressive.

Still, a market that is due to triple its size within 4 years is definitely good news for aspiring writers. It also reduces the need to invest in printing a self-published book to reach readers, hence reducing the production effort from the author’s side, and gives the ability to concentrate all distribution efforts to the online market.

 So, altogether, good news, time to write and publish 🙂