but the shape of the curve is different in each case. Adult fiction nearly reaches 45% before it levels off and starts to decline, adult nonfiction levels off at around 15% and, in the case of juvenile, the ebooks peak at around 12% and then fall off. Both adult fiction and juvenile show a sharp downturn in 2015, while adult nonfiction continues to grow very modestly before falling off in 2016.
Table 1.6 Ebooks as a percentage of total sales by broad category at Olympic, units and dollars
| Adult Fiction units | Adult Fiction $ | Adult NF units | Adult NF $ | Juv units | Juv $ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 |
| 2007 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0 | 0 |
| 2008 | 0.9 | 1 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0.1 |
| 2009 | 4 | 4.7 | 1.5 | 1.8 | 0.2 | 0.4 |
| 2010 | 12.6 | 14.3 | 4.4 | 4.9 | 0.9 | 1.4 |
| 2011 | 29.1 | 30.4 | 12.2 | 12.6 | 3.5 | 5.3 |
| 2012 | 37.2 | 38.2 | 15.9 | 15 | 5 | 8.4 |
| 2013 | 40.9 | 40.2 | 16 | 15.3 | 5.9 | 9.2 |
| 2014 | 42.6 | 43.4 | 16.6 | 15.8 | 7.5 | 12.2 |
| 2015 | 40.6 | 37.4 | 18.2 | 16.6 | 4 | 7.4 |
| 2016 | 35 | 38.9 | 16.4 | 13.2 | 6 | 6 |
Figure 1.7 Ebooks as a percentage of total sales by broad category at Olympic, units and dollars
We are still working with very broad categories, however. Let’s drill down a little further and examine the patterns for different categories of books, using a selected number of standard BISAC subject headings.6 Figures 1.8 and 1.9 break down ebooks as a percentage of total sales by subject at Olympic (for the data on which these figures are based, see appendix 1). Figure 1.8 is net dollars and Figure 1.9 is net units. (Again, the y-axis has been adjusted to display the S-curves.) These graphs vividly display the enormous variation in the uptake of ebooks across different categories of books, and underscore how misleading it is to collapse all of these categories into the single category of ‘ebook’. We see the huge spectrum of trajectories here, with each category of book displaying its own distinctive S-curve. Each S-curve rises in its own unique way and begins to level off at a point and in a manner that is specific to that category. In some cases, the growth plateaus and then stabilizes more or less at that level; in some cases, it plateaus and then begins to decline; in some cases, the growth levels off and declines and then shoots back up; and in other cases, the growth never takes off at all. We also see a lot of movement up and down – the lines jump about, dips are followed by rises and rises are followed by dips as the numbers for each category fluctuate from one year to the next. There’s nothing too surprising about that: these graphs are based on sales figures from one large trade house which has a limited number of books in any one category in any one year, so one or two books selling strongly as ebooks (or other special circumstances, like the disposal or acquisition of an imprint) can produce an ebook spike or dip in that category. The sales figures from one publisher – even a large publisher like Olympic – will display idiosyncrasies of this kind and therefore cannot be taken as a proxy for the industry as a whole. But by focusing on the broad patterns and trends rather than the fluctuations from one year to the next, we can get a good sense of how different categories of books have performed over time.
Figure 1.8 Ebooks as a percentage of total sales by subject at Olympic, net dollars
Figure 1.9 Ebooks as a percentage of total sales by subject at Olympic, net units
As these data make clear, the top-performing category in terms of ebook uptake is not business books after all, it is romance fiction – this outperforms every other category by a significant margin. Here we see steep growth from 2008 to 2011, by which time ebooks were accounting for 44.2% of all Olympic’s sales of romance books. Ebook sales dipped the following year but then rose again, accounting for around 55% of all romance sales in 2013 and 2014. In 2015 they fell back to 45% but then rebounded in 2016, when they once again amounted to around 53% of all Olympic’s sales of romance books. Of all the different categories of books published by Olympic, romance is the one where ebooks have accounted for the highest proportion of overall sales – more than half – and it’s a category where ebook sales remain high despite the downturn in other categories.
At the other end of the scale, juvenile nonfiction has seen very low levels of ebook uptake. The line for this category is flat and hardly rises off the floor of the graph – ebooks accounted
