Here are two cases of very big news for the two most successful “direct to Kindle” indie authors to date.
First, Amazon announced moments ago that John Locke has become the first indie author to sell a million Kindle books, with the following titles:
- Now & Then (a Donovan Creed Novel)
- Follow the Stone
- Lethal Experiment (a Donovan Creed Novel)
- Lethal People (a Donovan Creed Novel)
- Don’t Poke the Bear! (an Emmett Love Western)
- Vegas Moon (A Donovan Creed Novel)
- A Girl Like You (a Donovan Creed Novel)
- Saving Rachel (a Donovan Creed Crime Novel)
- Wish List
“As of yesterday, John Locke has sold 1,010,370 Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP),” said Amazon’s release.
Locke said he studied the ebook market, looked at pricing of ebooks, and decided to become the bestselling author of 99 Cent books bar none.
He did it.
His 10th book, a tell-all about how he marketed his way to success, breaks the pattern. How I Sold 1 Million eBooks In 5 Months costs $4.99.
Congratulations, John! See the entire Amazon release at the end of this post.
Meanwhile, the author who could become the next “Kindle Million Club” member, Amanda Hocking, is the subject of a pretty interesting full-length article in yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Magazine. It’s a good read whether you are a Hocking fan or simply someone interested in what’s going on in publishing and the Kindlesphere.
Hocking was outselling Locke in the Kindle store until around the time she signed a $2 million four-book contract with agency model publisher, St. Martin’s Press (MacMillan). She’s still selling 9,000 books a day, which is nothing to sneeze at.
Does Hocking’s contract mean she is no longer an indie author?
Not to me. For one thing, one important characteristic that Hocking and Locke share is that each of them writes very fast. Very, very fast. Like it takes them a month or two to complete a novel.
So even if Hocking has four books tied up with a traditional publisher, that need not keep her from bringing beaucoup other books direct to Kindle. And when she looks back on the decade as a millionaire 35-year-old in 2020 or so, I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t find that she made a lot more money with direct publishing than she did with a traditional publisher. But we’ll see.
Here’s Amazon’s release today:
| John Locke Becomes the First Independently Published Author to Join the “Kindle Million Club” |
Locke passes 1 million Kindle books sold using Kindle Direct Publishing
|
will roll out its weekly list of the top 150 bestselling books in the U.S., just as it does every Thursday.
. Hocking’s books currently rank #3, #11, #12, #27, #37, #41, and #46 on the Kindle Store top 50 bestsellers, and “the three titles in her Trylle Trilogy (Switched, Torn and Ascend, the latest) will make their debuts in the top 50 of USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list,” wrote USA Today’s Carol Memmott in an article entitled “Authors catch fire with self-published ebooks.”
to do the same, lest its bestseller list be rendered irrelevant.