Survey Reveals 100% Increase in Publishers Making Double-Digit Annual Revenues from eBooks

New York, NY and Falls Church, VA, June 5, 2012—Publishers Weekly (PW) magazine and Aptara announce that initial results from the 4th Annual eBook Survey of Publishers, conducted in April, reveal a 100% year-over-year increase in the number of publishers making greater than 10% of their annual revenues from eBooks (36% of eBook publishers surveyed as compared to 18% in 2011). This marks the first year since the survey was initiated in 2009 that eBooks are making meaningful contributions to publishers’ top lines.

“eBooks have reached a tipping point,” said Dev Ganesan, President and CEO of Aptara. “The ‘more than 10% of revenue’ barometer has been used by analysts to indicate when eBooks will be considered big business for publishers. With more than a third of eBook publishers already there, I’d say it’s official.”

The further maturing of publishers’ eBook operations and the eBook market in the last year has also resulted in:
• four out of five publishers now producing eBooks
• with the majority doing so for more than half of their entire catalog,
• yet standard operating procedure is still to release a print and digital edition, with only 11% of publishers issuing primarily digital-only editions

“The survey results provide the freshest look at how eBooks are impacting all parts of the industry up and down the supply chain," says PW's co-editorial director Jim Milliot.


To learn what eBook pricing model is most widely adopted, what eBook distribution channels publishers favor, whether Amazon or Apple makes publishers more money, and how eBook and enhanced eBook production methods are evolving, request a copy of the complete 2012 survey results and analysis to be released this summer The results include a breakdown of results by publisher type: Trade, Education, Professional, and Corporate.