Indie Book Publishing in the 2020s

Indie Book Publishing in the 2020s
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DigiLab - Sapienza Università di Roma
13 Febbraio 2020, Roma
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> Giacomo D’Angelo
CEO, StreetLib.com
> Mark Williams
Editor in Chief, TheNewPublishingStandard.com
Head of Communication, StreetLib.com


Transcript

1. Indie Book Publishing in the 2020s 13 Febbraio 2020, Roma DigiLab - Sapienza Università di Roma
2. StreetLib is The Global Books Aggregator for the 2020s 2
3. StreetLib Distribution Partners 3 Full list here: https://www.streetlib.com/book-stores/
4. 4 Indie Book Publishing in the 2020s 1. Global Opportunities 2. Big Success Stories of 2019-2020 3. The Indie Advantage 4. Digital Subscription as the Best Opportunity for Indies
5. It has never been a better time to be an Indie Publisher. Indies have never had more options, more control and more power over their publishing paths. Global publishing opportunities continue to expand all over the world, and a mix of platforms, technology, creativity, tools and devices allows indies to explore new horizons for the first time in human history. 5 Indie Book Publishing in the 2020s
6. 6 Global Opportunities We start 2020 with 4.5 billion people online. Just 6.9% of them are in the USA - 312 million. China @ 854 million and India @ 560 million - are both bigger than the USA. India is only at 41% internet penetration, and expected to top 800 million by 2025. India has just 5 million online in 2000. The rest of Asia adds another 886 million online.
7. 7 Global Opportunities • Asian online population: 2.3 billion • Europe 727.5 million • Latin America 444 million • Africa 522 million - 800 million forecast by 2025 ◦ Africa had just 4.5 million online in 2000. It is at less than 40% internet penetration today • Latin America 444 million • European Union 398 million • USA 312 million
8. 8 Global Opportunities Indonesia has 171 million online - three times that of Italy (54.7 million) Indonesia had just 2 million online in 2000 The Philippines (79 million), Vietnam (68.5million), Bangladesh (96 million) and Pakistan (71.6 million - just 35% penetration, and just 133,000 online in 2000) all have more internet users than the UK. Globally the forecast is 7.5 billion online by 2030.
9. 9 Big Success Stories of 2019-2020 1° example, OVERDRIVE: The US-based company OverDrive in 2019 delivered 211 million ebook downloads and 114 million audiobook downloads to digital libraries around the world. Staying with OverDrive, the company’s Sora app (ebooks and audiobooks for schools) had 5.5 million downloads in its first year, and saw reading time among kids double. Sora was being used in 23,000 schools globally.
10. 10 Big Success Stories of 2019-2020 And MANY Others: 2. The US digital comics sector is estimated to be worth $100 million, excluding subscription services like Serial Box (recently signed up Marvel) and much bigger players like Comixology: LINK 3. And Pearson announced it would be phasing out print textbooks to go fully digital: LINK
11. 11 Big Success Stories of 2019-2020 And MANY Others: 4. In Finland audiobook revenue doubled in 2019: LINK 5. In Norway 23% of the book market is now digital: LINK 6. And in the Netherlands ODILO became the new supplier to the Dutch National Library Service: LINK
12. 12 Big Success Stories of 2019-2020 And MANY Others: 7. In India one of the country’s biggest telcos launched its own ebook store: LINK 8. Russia’s giant ebook operator LitRes launched in Poland, as part of an aggressive expansion plan across Eurasia: LINK 9. Poland’s Audioteka launched in Turkey: LINK
13. 13 Big Success Stories of 2019-2020 And MANY Others: 10. In South Korea a new audiobook service Audioclip launched to compete with Storytel SK: LINK 11. Brazil-based Ubook expanded its operations, acquired new investment and has an IPO imminent: LINK 12. In the Middle East the online book store Jamalon attracted $10 million investment for expansion: LINK
14. 14 Big Success Stories of 2019-2020 And MANY Others: 13. The digital “free-reading” site Wattpad hit 80 million monthly users in 2019 as it continued its expansion globally and into vertical like film, TV and publishing: LINK 14. Smaller rivals to Wattpad like Singapore-based Dreame also delivered spectacular results: LINK 15. And MANY Others...
15. 15 The Indie Advantage Digital technologies offer global opportunities to all publishers. But self-publishers can be at the forefront of global publishing because: 1. They are not weighed down with archaic territorial rights thinking 2. They don’t need to protect any print investments
16. 16 Subscriptions as the Best Opportunity for Indies 1° example, AMAZON Kindle Unlimited: Books are just a secondary consideration for Amazon. Amazon Music is far more widely available than the Kindle store, and has 55 million subscribers: the subscription model is what consumers want. Yet in 2019 Amazon paid out over $300 million in royalties, just through its subscription service (Kindle Unlimited).
17. 17 Subscriptions as the Best Opportunity for Indies 2° example, SCRIBD: The US-based digital books subscription operator, Scribd, in Jan 2019 announced it had one million subscribers worldwide. Investors stumped up $58 million to aid Scribd’s global expansion in Dec 2019, and they wound up the year announcing revenue had risen from $75 million in 2018 to $100 million in 2019.
18. 18 Subscriptions as the Best Opportunity for Indies 3° example, STORYTEL: Storytel ended the year in 19 markets, fixed a $50 million funding arrangement, and hit 1 million subscribers 5 months ahead of schedule. Storytel wound up 2019 with 1.1 million subscribers, 45% annual subscriber growth and non-Nordic growth of 114%. To kick off 2020 Storytel announced it aimed to be in 40 markets by 2023, with $200 million revenue by end 2020.
19. 19 Subscriptions as the Best Opportunity for Indies Subscription levels the playing field: an indie title costs exactly the same as the biggest name in the catalogue. Subscription encourages readers to take risks: download a new author and try the title. If you don’t like it, try again, and again, and again. It costs nothing extra to experiment.
20. 20 Subscriptions as the Best Opportunity for Indies Subscription provides accessibility: For authors subscription gets us in front of millions of readers we’d never reach otherwise. At the right price. Unit royalties maybe lower than à la carte sales. But volume changes the dynamic.
21. All data points provided by TNPS, our global publishing industry journal. 21 https://thenewpublishingstandard.com/
22. Thank you! 22 Giacomo D’Angelo CEO, StreetLib.com Mark Williams Editor in Chief, TheNewPublishingStandard.com Head of Communication, StreetLib.com