Probably not.

But the data for sales of my novel, Déjà Vu, which I’ve published on the Kindle, iBooks and Smashwords, point to a sales ratio of about 1000:1.

Kindle Sales

Déjà Vu unit sales per month, beginning in March, are: 320, 938, 915, 738, 844, 643 and 581.

Smashwords (this includes Barnes and Noble, and a billion other ebook stores)

For the same period: 4.

iBooks

For the same period: 1.

Overall, then, the ratio of sales Kindle:other is 4979:5. Call it 1000:1. If Déjà Vu is representative of more general trends (it won’t be; but it’s in the ballpark, I expect), the Kindle store could be around 1000 times more successful than the other stores combined. Remember that the blurb, cover image and price are identical across stores.

What Leads to These Differences?

All of my marketing – if you can call it that – has pointed people to the Kindle store.

Amazon has a larger customer base to begin with, so cross-promotion will be more effective. That is, when Déjà Vu is recommended to people who have a history of buying similar titles, there are more of those people around to see the recommendation. It could well be that many people see Déjà Vu on Amazon when they’re not looking for it; few see my book on Smashwords or iBooks.

Amazon has a mature chart-based shopfront. I don’t think Smashwords does this very well. And when I (rarely) look at iBooks, the charts seem to be full of odd books, and they are all written by Jeremy Clarkson. Nothing wrong with that; but it suggests a smaller number of readers.

For the version of Déjà Vu sold on Amazon, I can control the look and feel of the ebook precisely. The version sold on Smashwords is produced using a Word template and, frankly, it looks like a piece of crap. Blockquotes don’t work properly; indentation is shot to hell. Likewise, the version for iBooks looks awful. Now, ebooks aren’t meant to look beautiful – but the creator should be able to provide a well-designed document whose structure melts away so that the reader can enjoy the story.

A Caveat

It’s worth noting that both iBooks and Smashwords are pushing huge numbers of books. Scott Pack recently reported large sales numbers for Confessions of a GP. And my friend Stephen J Sweeney has been selling his Battle for the Solar System books like gangbusters across many platforms. But Amazon has the lion’s share of this market for now.

So I’m looking at this Amanda Hocking headline. Flecks of tea are moving down the screen of my laptop like the raw Matrix. The half-formed idea in my head – that I can make a book available and I don’t need to have a publisher – becomes about three-quarters formed. My audience is going to be limited to a few million Kindle customers, but that’s like saying my writing is limited by the alphabet; it’s enough, and nobody is going to tell me that only Random House can use the ‘Q’.

More of my epic wisdom can be found over at Futurismic, where Paul Graham Raven has been asking me questions about the publishing industry at large. I have no real basis for my apparent expertise in this area – which is, of course, part of the fun of interviews.

Various statistics have been bandied about showing that while growth in physical book sales is slowing, growth in ebooks is accelerating. As a person who owns a Kindle, it’s easy to see why. The buying is immediate, cheap, and frictionless; the device weighs less than my watch (so I have a heavy watch).

All good fun.

Among other things, Scott writes:

Less than a decade ago it would have been possible to walk into a branch of Waterstone’s, especially some of the London shops, and ask for the bestselling book in the country only to discover that they didn’t stock it because ‘it wasn’t our sort of thing’. I remember an occasion when one branch refused to unpack a science fiction promotion because ‘our customers don’t like sci fi’. The same shop would complain whenever we ran a Jacqueline Wilson offer as ‘she’s a terrible writer and our customers can’t stand her’. I am not making any of this up. Is this what Jeffries wants? Really?

I’m not entirely convinced that this is a bad thing. When – years ago now – I was hawking my own book around branches of Waterstone’s, I had assumed (along with the public, I think) that such bookshops are essentially autonomous. However, on every occasion, I was told that the manager/manageress lacked the power to make buying decisions (or was too worried to exercise it), even when the decision centred on four or five books of a local author. So if there was a time when the managers of Waterstone’s branches were less timid, I’d say winding the clock back would be no bad thing.

He goes on to say:

Waterstone’s has branches in towns across the land. In some of these places a new Andy McNab novel will sell 20 or 30 times more than a new Martin Amis. The stock and merchandising of the shop should reflect that.

Which I agree with. I can’t stand Martin Amis and thoroughly enjoyed Bravo Two Zero when I was a teenager.

There is an interesting question at the heart of this debate. What do you or I want in a bookshop? Personally, I don’t really want bookshops at all. I want the recommendations of my friends and a web browser that gets me to Amazon.

Literature and the shops that sell it are two dissociable entities. As are, I think, words and books themselves.

► Tacit agreement | theBookseller.com

Oh dear. I seem to have upset someone with one of my reviews.

The elevator pitch is this: Self-published guy sends Scott a book to review. Scott, being a charitable bloke, reads it. Scott writes a brief review. Self-published guy doesn’t like the review overmuch and tells Scott via the comments.

Well now. Scott has just published a post entitled ‘Why do I bother?’, in which he laments the ungratefulness of the author. Scott’s blogging friends comment in that kind of Web 2.0 ‘hear hear’ way that is so bizarrely reminiscent of the schoolboy game ‘pile on’.

Scott goes on to say:

I find it interesting that in two and a half years of blogging I have only received four complaints about reviews I have posted (or not posted) on here. All of these were from self-published authors. Does that tell us anything? Two felt that I could have been more fulsome with my praise (which I would have been if their books had been more than just average), another was cross that I hadn’t reviewed his book (it was shit and I wish I had) and now this.

And then:

All I will say is that if you send me a book to review then do bear in mind that I will review it any bloody way I want, be that a full review, mini-review, quick flick, vitriolic sentence, rhyming couplet, mime, origami, semaphore or rock opera.

So there.

Let me say that I think Scott does a great job. When my own book was published the UKA Press – a publisher that nobody had heard of at the time, and few have since – Scott emailed me asking to read it. And he wasn’t working for a small publisher then. He was the chief buyer for Waterstone’s. So he’s got his heart in the right place and his blog reviews are read far and wide.

And yet.

When a person reviews a book, there is no law that says the author is going to bubble over with gratitude. And the reviewer needn’t be shocked if the author takes issue with the review. That’s what the comments feature on a blog is for. A blog is a conversation. If you start a conversation with an author by reviewing a book, he or she might actually reply to it.

Here’s the comment I left on Scott’s follow-up post:

Scott, as someone whose book you agreed to review – way back when – I think you’re doing a good thing overall. But I think you need to consider that in this situation you’re the big guy and the author is the little guy. The book means almost nothing to you and means very much to the author. I’m not saying that you should turn the other cheek. I’m suggesting that you take care about how you deal with responses to your reviews. The author has the pea-shooter of the comments field, while you have the double-barred shotgun of the post. The author has now been painted as some kind of publicity whore, and I’m not sure that’s the case. He wanted to reply to you about your review. That’s why you have comments, isn’t it?

To repeat, you have every right to say what you want on your blog. I think the author has the right to reply to you. In responding to him, I think you should use reasonable force.

And, as I write, I see that Scott has posted a reply to my comment:

I think you make a good point very well, Ian. As a blogger I do think it’s OK to pick out threads and comments and elevate them to the main page. I have done just that for a number of things in the past – both positive and negative – so even if I am wrong to do so then at least I am consistent.

The main reason I posted separately about this was that the original post was some days ago and Howard’s comment came a couple of days after it had appeared, meaning that both were some way down the page.

This whole debate throws up all manner of issues which I think are worth discussing. I am fascinated by the number of people who have had dealings with self-published authors and found them to be a right royal pain in the arse. This is a message that would be good to get out there as it might help other authors, prompting them to take stock before doing something similar.

But when it comes to this particular instance I think it boils down to one thing – research your market. If you send a book to a blogger to review and that blogger makes a habit and prominent feature of quick flick reviews then don’t complain when said blogger does just that with your book.

I don’t necessarily disagree with Scott’s reply. It will be interesting to read the post that Scott intends to write about self publishing and reviews.

► Me And My Big Mouth: Why Do I Bother?

“To participate, you grab any book, go to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and blog it. Then tag five people.”

So, here goes. This is the fifth sentence of page 123 from a book grabbed at random from my bookshelf:

He asked us where we were going.

This is taken from Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, which is a lovely, life-affirming travel book that scared the hell out of me with all its talk of heights.

I’m going to tag: Debra Hamel, Roland Hulme, Petrona, Roger Morris, and Scott Pack.

I can’t resist seeing what’s on magic page 123 of my own novel. Here it is:

It killed Shimoda outright.

HC [HarperCollins] bought TFP’s website, name and author contracts for an undisclosed sum from administrator Panos Eliades, Franklin and Company. TFP will be housed in the Press Books wing of HC, with publishing director Clare Christian, publisher Scott Pack and managing editor Heather Smith reporting to Press Books m.d. John Bond.

A few months back, Scott Pack expressed an interest in picking up Deja Vu. It didn’t come to much – best all round, I think – but TFP seems like a genuine outfit. I hope the management finds success under the HarperCollins auspice.

Via The Bookseller