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# The new economics of book publishing
- URL: https://onemanandhisblog.com/2012/01/the_new_economics_of_book_publishing/
- Published: 2012-01-15T11:01:03.000Z
- Updated: 2024-03-18T08:59:03.000Z
- Author: Adam Tinworth
- Tags: amazon, ebooks, Kindle, self-publishing

From *The Guardian*‘s [profile of Amanda Hocking](http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/12/amanda-hocking-self-publishing?ref=onemanandhisblog.com):

> By January last year she was selling more than 100,000 a month. Being her own boss allowed her to set her own pricing policy – she decided to charge just 99 cents for the first book in a series, as a loss leader to attract readers, and then increase the cover price to $2.99 for each sequel. Though that’s cheap compared with the $10 and upwards charged for printed books she gained a much greater proportion of the royalties. Amazon would give her 30% of all royalties for the 99-cent books, rising to 70% for the $2.99 editions – a much greater proportion than the traditional 10 or 15% that publishing houses award their authors. You don’t have to be much of a mathematician to see the attraction of those figures: 70% of $2.99 is $2.09; 10% of a paperback priced at $9.99 is 99 cents. Multiply that by a million – last November Hocking entered the hallowed halls of the Kindle Million Club, with more than 1m copies sold – and you are talking megabucks.

I remain perpetually amazed that so much time and effort from major publishers is going into iPad editions when the Kindle market is just sitting there…