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

[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.)