It's great news that Kindle books are doing so well, and that they seem to level the playing field for authors and publishers. I wonder what it is that makes it possible to compete so successfully with major publishers and their larger promotional budget when you're dealing with Kindle books rather than print books.

@Adele, An interesting point. The main reason is that Kindle book selling is much more of a meritocracy than print book selling.

The reason self-published authors can't compete in print is that their books are unlikely to get into Waterstones etc in the first place, and are never going to find themselves on a 'promotion table' in the middle of the store.

On Amazon, the books are there waiting to be bought in the world's biggest book store. If you promote properly via social networking, you can build a readership without spending money, and your books move up the Amazon charts. That exposure on Amazon, via the charts, and the "customers also bought" listings, makes your books even more visible, leading to more sales, and more exposure.

Good self-published books can succeed online, whereas they never stood a chance in print.

Having researched it more I can see that price is a main factor in this. The self published authors promoting their books write blogs about how they do it and they all say it's important to give books from their backlist away free and to set really low prices for their ebooks. They then have regular promotions giving them away for a day at a time. I wonder if those free days add up in the total sales. I think it's still hard to compete to get the high readership they get, but it wouldn't be possible for publishers to sell ebooks at those prices. We just couldn't pay the authors if we did it, even dividing the income 50/50, or even giving the authors a larger share. It would be pennies.

I can also see that Amazon really promotes these cheaper books if you go to the Amazon Kindle store. So it does make it hard for publishers to sell realistically priced ebooks. It's sad because the authors doing all this to self promote are often hoping to attract a deal from a traditional publisher, and a viable way of selling ebooks could help keep more publishing outlets open.

@Hairy Yes, with further research I can see that Amazon really promote the cheap ones and free deals, and the social networks created by others to help authors publish their Kindle books all work for the self published authors.

The prices publishers have to charge in order to pay an author even a small royalty and pay Amazon commission already sets us at too expensive a price to compete in this market. I suppose the major publishers can promote bestsellers and people will pay for them, but for smaller publishers like us it's incredibly hard to break in.

I've been following how these authors market their Kindle books and it does only work for self published authors. I've tried going on the message boards like kindleboards.com but it's forbidden to say I'm a publisher or author on most of the boards. There's only one board where you're allowed to say your an author and it's full of bargain books, freebie offers etc.

It's probably unfair to rubbish the books that succeed in this way from self published authors. I think it will still be the good ones that succeed in all that competition. However, they are hoping to use this to attract a publisher, and unless ebooks can also help publishers expand and survive, many publishing outlets will close.

As usual, it is left to the bloggers to provide the analysis that The Bookseller should be providing. The best thing about paying for a sub might be access to bloggers rather than recycled press releases.

Its been stated before but as a Kindle owner heres what I think...I don't just buy cheap ebooks. I buy what I want, but only at what I think as a consumer is a fair price. Whats a fair price? As long as I am saving on the cost of a new hardback/paperback, if I really want to read the book now, I will pay. What I will not do is buy an ebook that is priced more - on Amazon - than the hardback/paperback on Amazon (no local bookshop where I live). I'll wait for it to come down in price or buy the paperback on release.

@ datz The problem, if you look on other discussions, is that Amazon and their resellers are offering the books at prices lower than cost (the price they pay the publisher). They can afford to do this in order to compete and because they make a large income from their Marketplace where they get a commission for no actual work. So it's quite likely an ebook by a publisher could turn out more expensive than a paperback. Amazon charges a 30% mark up on our Kindle books. We give the author have of the income in royalties, and there's VAT and another charge that we don't quite understand. This all makes it necessary to charge about £5 as a minimum in order to give the author just over £1. Paperbacks discounted to below cost price in order to compete can be less than that.

I buy ebooks because I prefer them. I like to read on my Kindle. I like it that I don't have to clutter up my room with paperbacks that soon yellow and look terrible. If the price is similar to the physical book then I'm happy with that. It's actually the case for many ebook readers that they don't read them because they're cheaper but would prefer a physical book. Many people now prefer ebooks for the reasons I've given, and also it's so easy to carry a number of books around with you. I read a lot and this is a fantastic advantage.