About two months ago, I asked the authors of podcast novels available at Podiobooks.com to answer a simple question: is your podcast novel also available in print or Kindle format at Amazon.com? I wanted to track the titles of my peers on the Amazon.com bestseller charts to see how we’re all doing.
Today I gathered up the data to maybe try to find out why podcasting authors are doing as well as they are… or not. I looked at the lifetime average Amazon.com chart position of the books in question. All the books have been out at least a month, the great majority of them much longer. Keep in mind that this list is not necessarily a complete accounting of every podiobook with a presence on Amazon.com — some people may not have reported to me, some books don’t sell well enough to show a chart listing on Amazon.com at all and some books aren’t tracked by the service I used to gather the data.
My list contains 43 items available on Amazon.com. 37 are print books. Surprisingly, only five of the authors of those 37 books also have their work available for the Amazon Kindle
. Unless the author has surrendered the electronic rights to their manuscript, I can’t think of any reason why distribution on the Kindle would not be offered — the profit margins are much better than royalties from print books. Hopefully the authors themselves will have feedback to give in the comments.
The Top Twenty Podiobooks In Print At Amazon.com
- “Contagious”
by Scott Sigler ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 5,362
- “Infected”
(paperback) by Scott Sigler ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 9,632
- “Infected”
(hardcover) by Scott Sigler ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 30,901
- “Playing For Keeps”
by Mur Lafferty ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 90,520
- “The Masnavi, Book One”
by Jalal al-Din Rumi ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 112,574
- “Earthcore”
by Scott Sigler ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 203,340
- “Ancestor”
by Scott Sigler ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 233,762
- “Brave Men Run – A Novel of the Sovereign Era”
by Matthew Wayne Selznick ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 251,124
- “Singularity”
by Bill DeSmedt ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 313,482
- “The Case of the Pitcher’s Pendant”
by Tee Morris ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 331,480
- “Digital Magic”
by Philippa Ballantine ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 400,620
- “Jack Wakes Up”
by Seth Harwood ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 441,850
- “Chasing the Bard”
by Philippa Ballantine ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 450,277
- “Griffin’s Daughter”
by Leslie Ann Moore ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 472,135
- “The Pocket and the Pendant”
by Mark Jeffrey ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 479,198
- “Billibub Baddings and the Case of the Singing Sword”
by Tee Morris ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 560,470
- “The Mark of a Druid”
by Rhonda R Carpenter ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 650,931
- “Morevi: The Chronicles of Rafe and Askana”
by Tee Morris and Lisa Lee ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 672,882
- “The Fox”
by Arlene Radasky ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 689,958
- “Clear Heart”
by Joe Cottonwood ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 725,273
Perhaps it’s no surprise that fully 25% of the top twenty podcast novels available in print on Amazon.com are authored by Scott Sigler. He’s the most prolific podcast novelist of the authors on this list. That relentless and consistent approach built an audience that certainly helped him attract a multiple-book deal from a major publisher. The second most successful author has only one podiobook available in print, but Mur Lafferty has also produced a number of consistently high-quality podiobooks and other podcasts over the last four years, steadily building up a huge audience.
Despite being far (far, far) less prolific than Sigler or Lafferty, I manage to maintain the number four author slot by maintaining a presence through contributions to other podcasts, dramatic voice work, occasional “big events,” and social networking that drives word of mouth.
Jawid Mojaddedi’s reading of “The Masnavi” has the benefit of being an Oxford Classic and being a bestseller in its niche. Capturing a niche is something that shouldn’t be ignored — a few dedicated and passionate fans or interested people can have a big impact, and Mojaddedi was smart to extend that by offering a free podcast version of this already popular book.
Bill DeSmedt’s “Singularity” is one of the original podiobooks and one of the few solid hard science fiction podiobooks available. Bill works hard on the book’s specific niche, as well, keeping fans up to date on related science and theory as it becomes available.
There are some relative newcomers to the podiobook world on that top 20 list — I’d love to hear from them in the comments: how are you marketing the print edition of your book? How important has the podcast version been in promoting it and driving sales?
One thing worth mentioning — even if we eliminate the imbalance caused by mega-sellers like Sigler and, to a lesser degree, Lafferty, the average chart ranking for these top twenty authors is 436,834. If we allow an estimate of about seven million book titles in stock at Amazon, that puts these podiobook authors in the top 6% — not too shabby, and probably better than most non-podcasting independent and small press authors.
The Kindle Five
Of the 23 authors on my list of 37 books, only five have their works also available for the Amazon Kindle e-book reading device at the time of my original inquiry. Here they are, along with their lifetime average positions on the Amazon.com Kindle Bestseller List:
- Mur Lafferty ~ 8,909
- Matthew Wayne Selznick ~ 21,210
- Mike Luoma ~ 73,367
- Teel McClanahan ~ 84,040
- Dave Donelson ~ 113,842
Amazon.com touts that there are “over 250,000″ titles available for the Kindle. So, on average, the Kindle Five are sitting pretty in the top 25% of all titles offered for that device. Lafferty alone is in the top 4% of all titles sold for the Kindle; I’m hanging tough in the top 8%.
If you’re an independent, self-published or small press author and you own the electronic rights to your work, I urge you to make your book available for the Kindle and any other e-book platform you can think of. Instead of what are probably single-digit or low double-digit royalties for your print edition, you could be making 35% or more from the retail price of every Kindle edition sold. It’s fairly easy to create a Kindle edition, and if you aren’t comfortable doing it yourself, I can help. What have you got to lose?
One note about this list: I know Scott Sigler has books available for the Kindle, but every time I try to track them, the script breaks. I have no idea why. Maybe Scott can give us his lifetime average chart positions for Kindle versions of his books..?
Help Me Draw Conclusions
I can look at these books and see, pretty much at a glance, that massive self-promotion, community building and consistent personal branding — along with prolific output — make a difference driving sales for authors who offer their podcast novels in print and e-book editions on Amazon.com. On the other hand, you don’t need a list to understand that: promotion and marketing drives sales.
So I want to hear from these authors. What are they doing to drive sales? What works? What doesn’t work? Why should other authors use podcasting to promote their work… if they should at all? Let’s see the discussion in the comments of this blog post.
The Rest of the List
Here’s where the rest of the titles ended up after the top twenty print books:
- “The Next Fix”
by Matt Wallace ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 815,823
- “Taken Liberty”
by Steven Wilson ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 1,143,468
- “Hunting Elf”
by Dave Donelson ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 1,442,127
- “Vatican Assassin”
by Mike Luoma ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 1,664,651
- “Daughter of the Sun”
by Lonnie Ezell ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 1,810,552
- “Prophecy of Swords”
by M.H. Bonham ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 1,901,573
- “A Dancing Bear”
by David Free ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 1,960,015
- “The Chicago Connection”
by John Swift ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 2,130,674
- “Heirs of the New Earth”
by David Lee Summers ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 2,134,906
- “Vatican Ambassador”
by Mike Luoma ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 2,169,866
- “Children of the Old Stars”
by David Lee Summers ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 2,228,025
- “Pirates of Sufiro”
by David Lee Summers ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 2,291,142
- “Doctor Janeway’s Plague”
by John Farrell ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 2,661,500
- “Roadworks”
by Gerard Readett ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 3,131,723
- “Vatican Abdicator”
by Mike Luoma ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 3,364,625
- “Sellout”
by Brad Lockwood ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 4,460,663
- “Lost and Not Found”
by Teel McClanahan ~ Lifetime Average Chart Position: 4,911,081
These titles sit in the top 35% of print books sold at Amazon. What sets their authors so far apart from the top 6%? Again, I’d love to hear ideas from the authors themselves… and their listener / readers.
Science fiction Grandmaster Philip Jose Farmer died today at the age of ninety one.
Farmer is one of my forgotten influences. When people ask, I always site Bradbury, Burroughs, Niven… but I can’t discount how many times I re-read “Dark is the Sun,” (with its remarkable ageless plant-centaur) or the “Riverworld” series. It wasn’t even that long ago I joyfully romped through an ACE Double of “Lord of the Trees” and “The Mad Goblin,” Farmer’s double-feature Tarzan / Doc Savage pastiche.
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