Big name traditional authors like Stieg Larsson (The Girl Who Played With Fire) and Nora Roberts (Chasing Fire, Vision in White) have sold over 1 million Kindle eBooks on Amazon. Obviously, they got their start the usual way, having their books published by a Publishing House. But the most recent Kindle eBook Million Seller, and only the 8th so far, was never accepted by a single traditional publisher. Instead, John Locke (Donovan Creed novels) self published his own books using the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system with zero backing from the powerful PR departments big, traditional publishers can employ.
But the up side to self publishing is nice. There are no board meetings to attend, no hustling to make deadlines and all the profits are yours. But selling 1 million books, either Kindle eBooks or physical books, is an amazing feat. So, how did he do it? What secret recipe did Locke follow? He will tell all in his new book to be released in physical and Kindle eBook form, “How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months”.
Basically, he was selling eBooks priced at $2.99 to $9.99 at first. This is Kindle’s way of regulating the pricing structure, as it offers 70% royalties paid to the author. Lower or higher than that offers only a 35% payout. But as a test, Locke saw his sales skyrocket when he began to price his eBooks at $0.99 to $2.98, and has to date sold 1,010,370 eBooks, earning himself around $353,000.
Kindle’s Vice President of Kindle Content, Russ Grandinetti, stated that Amazon is happy a self-published author has joined the elite Million Selling Kindle eBook ranks, and went on to further state that this shows that anyone can successfully become a published author. No mention was made of the price of Locke’s tell-all novel.
Locke reportedly sells one Kindle eBook every 7 seconds, and all of his books are sold in the Kindle Store, for delivery and reading on the Amazon Kindle eReaders. Amazon recently reported that sales of their eBooks have finally eclipsed sales of physical books, and now 3 Kindle eBooks are sold for every hardback book purchased at Amazon’s site.
