Very rich indie writer
I believe that this is a big change to come in the future and slowly publishing will be centralised around e-books. I am not sure how good this will be for the future of books and eventually as this sector of publishing starts to over-crowd it will be interesting to see what will be done to solve this problem. However, after all this change and the embracement of technology in publishing there will still be publishers who take advantage of the traditional way of publishing.
Some things that need to be said
I personally think that she makes some great points in this blog post. One thing that is striking is how the sales of an author is a mix of luck and hard work. An author who works for their whole life trying to be a successful publisher and may not get the crucial break through, which could make a big difference. Also the split of the market is quite incredible, this was a few months ago and I wouldn’t be surprised if it has already reached 25% because of the fact that the e-books have sky rocketed in the past months and will continue to do so.
How many imprints does Amazon run?
I think what Amazon are doing can be useful at this economic time and can help both them and the author, however, may undermine publishers. Also the fact that amazon is getting money out of this can be slightly unfair but is useful for users.
- Amanda Hocking is a rich publisher - 26 years old and has self-published 9 books
- She sells 100,000 e-books per month
- She doesn’t traditionally publish and she sells e-books at 3$ per book
- A view of a private publisher states that she gives a better offer than any other traditional publisher
- Indie publishers get a 70% split and sell at lower prices but still make more money because there are less costs and more people buy these books because they are cheaper
- It is easier to follow because you don’t need to worry about producing more copies
- Amanda Hocking is top selling e-book publisher but is not very famous
- People are putting web fictions on kindle e-book store
- Web-fiction writers will further evolve and combine e-books with web sites
- Writers can make a lot of money if they work hard and are smart
- In 2011 January she sold 450,000 e-books
I believe that this is a big change to come in the future and slowly publishing will be centralised around e-books. I am not sure how good this will be for the future of books and eventually as this sector of publishing starts to over-crowd it will be interesting to see what will be done to solve this problem. However, after all this change and the embracement of technology in publishing there will still be publishers who take advantage of the traditional way of publishing.
Some things that need to be said
- This is Amanda Hocking’s blog, where she talks about how she is being noticed by the internet
- She is now 1000+ followers on twitter
- She is being noticed and got a flood of e-mails so she has less time to write
- Not many people will be super successful e-book publishers like her
- Hard to be best self-publisher
- She does a lot of work
- Hours a day for years, has not got a lot of free time
- She can not stop working now or it will all collapse
- Hard to edit or find an editor - has to look out for a lot
- Traditional publishers want share of money not scared of her
- Traditional publishers still own 80% of market - e-books could gain majority in 5-10 years
- Still about half e-books are traditionally published
- Publishers want money - authors should see them as evil companies
- Authors who are better and do the same genre and price low are still not as successful as her for unknown reasons
- More people will sell less than 100 copies than 10000+
- A writer has more control now
I personally think that she makes some great points in this blog post. One thing that is striking is how the sales of an author is a mix of luck and hard work. An author who works for their whole life trying to be a successful publisher and may not get the crucial break through, which could make a big difference. Also the split of the market is quite incredible, this was a few months ago and I wouldn’t be surprised if it has already reached 25% because of the fact that the e-books have sky rocketed in the past months and will continue to do so.
How many imprints does Amazon run?
- Amazon made 4th imprint
- First imprint genre specified - on romance
- Eventually Amazon will do this for all genres
- Amazon maybe interfering too much
- Their first imprint in 2009 would use information like customer reviews to find very good books and over-looked authors
- Then Amazon would promote these books
- This is like an injection of views and publicity
- Another imprint was then launched to translate foreign books into english by identifying good books like the previous imprint
- Translating isn’t always economically viable
I think what Amazon are doing can be useful at this economic time and can help both them and the author, however, may undermine publishers. Also the fact that amazon is getting money out of this can be slightly unfair but is useful for users.
