BAIPA member Steven Kessler finds interesting article for BAIPA members

For a deep look into who’s now making money writing books, read the May 2016 Author Earnings Report

May 2016 Author Earnings Report:
The definitive million-title study of US author earnings

Data in the publishing biz is hard to come by. Without widespread sharing of data by retailers, publishers, agents, and authors, we are all left like the blind to describe different parts of the same but seemingly disjointed elephant. Two years ago, AuthorEarnings released its first report on a new part of this elephant: E-book sales on Amazon.com. Our report stirred controversy, as it described a formerly unseen world of publishing data.

Over the past two years, we have worked with industry insiders and data-savvy authors to refine our approach. This year, our up-to-date methodology and conclusions were presented in a Digital Book World 2016 keynote to an audience of prominent traditional publishers, agents, and retailers — many of whom deemed the AuthorEarnings keynote and hour-long Q&A with Publishers Lunch to be a highlight of the show. (The complete DBW slides can be found here).

Nowadays, even those who still fundamentally disagree with our conclusions generally acknowledge the accuracy of AuthorEarnings’ numbers. Their objections, these days, focus on what our reports *don’t* cover, rather than what they do. There is much more of the elephant to describe, and we relish that opportunity. Slowly but surely, the overall picture is being filled in. With each report, we uncover something new. This report is no different. In fact, it may be our most shocking.

Click here to read entire article: AuthorEarnings.