Revealing Book Statistics For eBooks

This post has two interesting statistics.

Who Should Publish My Book?

* More readers go to an author’s site (23 percent) for information than go to the publisher’s website (18 percent). The difference may not appear huge, but it certainly suggests that it is the author, not the publisher, who sells books. (Spier New York poll, 2006)

Emphasis added by me.

Do you know that the only time I wind up at a publisher's site is when I can't find a website for the writer? I have zero interest in the imprint (most of the time). I read writers, not publishers.

And this:

* Seventy-five percent of booksellers surveyed reported that the most important element of a book’s success is the look and design of the cover. In other words, readers don’t check to see who published the book. They buy because of the title, design, and compelling sales copy and testimonials on the back cover.

Emphasis added by me.

I've yelled about covers here and here and here and here and here.

Start to think about how important these statistics will become -- and how they will change -- as more writers give up on the dying dinosaurs of print and do direct-published eBooks.

-- via Twitter from blogbooktours