Self-publishing is for wannabe writers. Right? Wrong.
Austin, Minnesota fantasy fiction writer, Amanda Hocking, sold over 650,000 eBooks in January alone. She’s the number one selling indie author on the Kindle and the Web is full of articles on her and how she’s proof that the publishing industry–like the music industry and the newspaper industry before it–is being blown to bits by the Internet.
With all the press attention she’s receiving, Hocking decided to address some of the speculation swirling around the story of her success.
Saying traditional publishing is dead right now is like declaring yourself the winner in the sixth inning of a baseball game when you have 2 points and the other team has 8 just because you scored all your points this inning, and they haven’t scored any since the first.
eBooks make up at best 20% of the market. Print books make up the other 80%. Traditional publishers still control the largest part of the market, and they will – for a long time, maybe forever.
Her Kindle eBooks range in price from $.99 to $2.99 on Amazon.com. The prices presents little risk for buyers, which helps to explain the incredible volume of units sold by Ms. Hocking. I have not yet read her work, so I can’t comment on its quality, but whatever the quality, she’s clearly appealing to a large group of readers. She’s also busting her butt to make it happen.
This is literally years of work you’re seeing. And hours and hours of work each day. The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn’t writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me.
Speaking of marketing, Hocking, like so many authors today has invested in video as a promotional tool.