I found this study via a Tweet by David Gaughran. In the post, Kevin McLaughlin presents some data he pulled together from the Feb. 26, 2012 list of Top 200 ebooks on Amazon, in the Science Fiction genre. He carefully determined which ones were self-published and which were published by traditional publishing houses (not just the Big Six). Here’s how he explains his choices.

Analysis and data are from the top 200 bestselling science fiction ebooks on Amazon, February 26th 2012. EVERY attempt was made to ensure the data was as accurate as possible. Publishing companies owned by the author were counted as self publishing. Publishing companies which publish any submitted book for a fee were likewise counted as self publishing (there was one case of an Outskirts book). Publishing companies which in any way vet incoming books or have a submission process were counted as traditional publishers (couple of cases of Piers Anthony books by Premier Digital Publishing, for example). Whenever a question existed whether a publisher was trad or indie, I counted it as trad.

Please note that this is a limited data set, from one retailer (albeit a dominant one), about one genre of fiction.

His findings astonished me. 72% of the Top 25 best sellers most popular were self-published ebooks. 77% of the Top 200 best sellers most popular were self-published. I put his figures into a spreadsheet so that I could see them charted. This is what it looks like.

You can see that he also sorted by price point. I’ve simplified his labeling a bit, since (for example) $1.49 was actually $1.49-1.50 and $4.99 was actually $4.95-4.99. You can view his original categories at the post linked above. But the visual here is striking. Self-published ebooks are now the vast majority of best sellers the most popular in the science fiction genre, and most of them sell for $6 and under. A bare film of traditionally published ebooks inhabit the higher price points, and I assume those are mostly the best-known authors. Kevin’s analysis of what’s happening price-wise for self-published authors is well worth reading, and makes a lot of sense to me.

I believe we’re seeing a trend which will continue of self published authors starting at those [lower price] points, then gradually moving prices up as they acquire more readership and audience. More books, more years of work in learning the craft, and more readers will enable writers to boost prices and therefore profit more from each sale.

The world is changing, and these numbers show the change.

Edited to add: In talking with folks on the Kindleboards, it became clear that these numbers were not from the official Top Sellers list, but rather from the more volatile (but still interesting) list sorted by popularity. That includes free download information as well as sales, and because a lot of indies use Kindle Select to gain visibility, they’ll be more prominent on this list than on the Top 100 Sellers list. At least for now 🙂