The Amazon Kindle eBook brand is one of the most popular forms of digital publishing in today’s social community. As of early 2016, the direct-to-consumer online retailer was selling 1.06 million eBooks (paid downloads) per day.

Consumers spent $5.75 million per day during a recent month, with $1.76 million of those sales directed to author royalties. Though it is somewhat undocumented regarding distribution, authors received an additional $140 million in funds from Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s subscription reading service. The industry as a whole is generating over $2.1 billion in sales annually.

It is interesting to note that as established publisher sales decreased, eBooks written by independent authors increased.33 During an assessment in 2016, 56 of Amazon’s 100 top-selling eBooks were self-published titles. Topically, the bestselling independent authors write about paranormal activities, romance, thrillers, urban fiction, suspense, and science fiction. With the ascent of digital titles on Amazon and other sources, industry experts posit that printed versions of books will become a niche market, similar to the effect noted in magazine and newsprint. Digital publishing strategist Ben Thompson applies aggregation theory to the process, suggesting that sales portals like Amazon eliminate intermediaries, which allows independent publishers to avoid publishers and go direct to consumers.

Discussion Questions 

1. Every eBook author is challenged to build reader sales through targeted social media marketing. If an author has just finished a historical book on the Civil War, what social media groups might provide interested members?
Run a search in LinkedIn and Google+ to explore options.
2. Historical documentarian Ken Burns created a 1990 television series on the Civil War for the Public Broadcasting Network (PBS). Find Mr Burns’
Twitter user handle, then write a tweet that would include both user handle and hashtag to link his work with a new eBook on the Civil War.
3. An eBook author has just self-published an expert’s guide to gardening, with a large array of color photos embedded in the publication. How would you leverage Pinterest and Instagram to announce the launch of the book?
4. Choose a topic, then create a book title for that topic. What order of social media would you utilize to make the announcement to potential readers?