Self-published author sold 450,000 books in January

[nancylebov]

Amanda Hocking sells a best-seller quantity of her books, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch discusses the implications.

I'm surprised-- I'd assumed that self-publication wasn't all that viable because people generally won't read slush unless they're paid for it. Obviously, there are ways of crowd-sourcing the slush reading which go beyond the efficient methods developed for fanfiction. Anyone have the details?

Links thanks to haikujaguar.

Comments

[green_knight]

It seems as if the people who have success already have a following thanks to traditional publishing, and name recognition. (Also, there's JK Rowling - every area has its outliers.)

I'm almost tempted to put a book on Amazon and see what happens, although I know of at least one author who found it unsatisfactory.

[andrewhickey.info]

In this case, I think it's that people *will* read slush if it's priced low enough - she's published *fourteen* books in less than a year, mostly at about a dollar apiece. At that price, people will try anything, and they're aimed at teenagers - not usually the most discriminating market.

I wish I didn't have scruples, frankly...

[nancylebov]

What would you be writing if you didn't have scruples?

[andrewhickey.info]

Stuff that would sell, primarily :-/
It looks from looking around Lulu.com, and examining Kindleboards, that there are only three ways to sell a significant number of books through self-publishing:
1) Write a highly technical textbook on something that only a small number of people need to know, but for which there's no other textbook available.
2) Write industrial quantities of very bad prose in either the steampunk or 'dark romance' genres, then split each normal-length book into three 100-page 'novellas', call it a trilogy, set your price as low as possible and try to get your books bought by teenagers who are after more Twilight.
3) Write about how God has a special plan for you and there's probably an angel right now, just round the corner, with a special message for you from your dead goldfish.

Unfortunately, my scruples prevent me from doing 2) or 3) - I don't actively want to pollute people's minds for money - and 1) is not something I have the aptitude for...

[avram]

I'd assumed that self-publication was perfectly viable because I know of people who've made themselves money in other industries (comics, games, software) by doing it. Sometimes earning-a-living money, sometimes just some side money. (Sometimes, losing money.) But of course it's viable. Why shouldn't it be?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

As I said, I thought the slush pile problem (I've seen plenty of ranting about how awful reading slush is) would tend to make self-published work get lost in the huge quantities of stuff not worth looking at.

The next question would be how filtering happens in various fields.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

word of mouth for the win?

[avram]

How is this different from readers finding stuff they want to read in the massive, ever-expanding pile of traditionally-published books?

In other words, there's filtering going on, but there's always been filtering going on. (Well, since Gutenberg's day, at least.)

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Don't think slush figures into it. In many ways, it mirrors the success of indie musicians in online distribution.

As the article notes, the author in question experienced a rapid uptick in sales going from hundreds to thousand to tens of thousands. This was a combination of word of mouth recommendations and extremely low price point. It is also a function of many traditional publishers/authors being unwilling to put their materials online in E-Book format. I'm also willing to bet that these self-published authors don't impose all sorts of annoying DRM on their customers.

How good does a book need to be for me to spend $1.25, especially if the author makes it easy for me to read in my preferred format? A friend recommends it. I try it. It's enjoyable. I recommend it to another friend.

Note you still have to be able to write. If you write crap, no one is going to read it. But screening by friends solves the slush problem you identify.

[sodyera.livejournal.com]

See my post.