Traditional book publishers are rapidly losing market share. This is bad news (overdue) for them and great news for the rest of us. These established houses hold both authors and the reading public hostage: writers, by limiting royalties and holding rights and; the public, by limiting available titles to what editorial staffs see as worthy.

The technology age has shattered the old monopoly. Now, even mid-wit, cost smoking bloggers can publish books – immediately available to readers. Independent presses, print on demand services, Amazon and Kindle are seizing a huge market share while opening competition and choices.

Fortune reports:

According to the figures from Author Earnings — which are based in part on regular samples of Amazon sales data — what’s really been happening is that the market share of established publishers has been declining, while sales of independently published e-books have been growing. In particular, sales of books that don’t even have industry standard ISBN numbers have increased.

Look at this chart:

Fortune.

Vox Day notes the traditional industry is collapsing.

This is a serious problem for the major publishers because ebook sales are a literally less-than-zero-sum game at this point in time. Regardless, it’s not so much the direct competition that threatens to do the big publishers in as it is the new X-factor in ebook sales, which is Kindle Unlimited. Notice which two types of publishers have been doing well since the KU change: Amazon and Small to Medium Publishers.

Good news for you! If I had gone with a dinosaur publishing company, I would still be waiting on someone’s approval. You, many of you, would not be reading The Happy Little Cigar Book right now.

As is, just today, I received 100 copies for local distribution and signing events. Then there is Amazon. Hooray! Order when ready, friends.

Wheeeee!