Think you have a book inside you? Now you can publish without publishers …
Paidcontent.org recently posted: “Meet the A-List Authors of Self-publishing.” As someone who had an idea years ago for a book series that would “bridge the digital/print gap” (agents and publishers weren’t interested), I found this article heartening and not surprising. Here’s the lead:
“Authors who self-published their books have traditionally done it out of desperation”it was the result of being ignored or rejected by publishing houses. And without the marketing muscle of a publishing house, most of those self-published books were doomed commercially. But the world of self-publishing is changing fast in the digital era. A growing number of authors are making a nice living selling their own e-books, often at $0.99 a pop. Below is a list of four that are at the top of that heap. One of them earned between $1.5 million and $2 million last year from sales of her ebooks; another walked away from a $500,000 advance after calculating he could do better on his own; a third bypassed traditional publishers to sign an exclusive deal with Amazon; (NSDQ: AMZN) and the fourth sold over 360,000 ebooks in March alone.
In 2009 (the latest figures available), nearly 765,000 titles were self-published in the U.S., an increase of 181 percent over the previous year. The self-publishing business is heating up in other ways too. Just last week, Smashwords, which publishes and distributes about 45,000 ebooks, signed a deal with ScrollMotion to create mobile apps for all its 18,000 author clients. To be sure, the vast majority of self-published books never come close to a bestseller list and their authors aren’t exactly raking it in. But as the self-publishing business matures, more authors are carving out audiences”in some cases, in sizable numbers. Some of them now even have agents handling their foreign and movie rights, and big publishers knocking on their doors.”
The rest of the article goes into detail about the best-selling authors (Amanda Hocking, Barry Eisler, J.A. Konrath, John Locke) — their books, pricing, royalties, revenues, decision to have agents or not … It’s pretty impressive.
Maybe I should rethink by book series idea after all. (Anyone know a good editor?!)
Harriett@snoety.com
