Self-Publishing Success Story

I may be late to the party for Amanda Hocking. Partly due to recently stumbling over her blog post from last August. While I have never been a proponent for self-publishing, her comments seem to lend some legitimacy to the trend. Her candor is refreshing as she describes how her success began and what she has learned during the process. Amanda shares her self-publishing success:

"Also on Monday, I released the fourth book in my vampire series. It peaked #25 in the entire Kindle store. If you're wondering how many sales it took the book to get that high: 150 in a two hour period. Also on Monday - in one 24-hour period - I made $1200. Working at my day job full time, the most I'd ever made in a month is $1000. I just made more in a day than I used to make in a month.

Things that should be noted: I just released a book people were excited for. That isn't my average sales. That fourth book is already about to slip out of the top #100 and it's only been in it for four days. So don't think that's usually how awesome my sales are. It's not. I know that. I don't expect days like that to happen very often. But it was still an awesome day."

While poking fun at her clichéd topics and characters, her self-publishing success is real. Yet, she tempers it with the knowledge that it isn't necessarily going to continue at the pace it has. Her use of Twitter, facebook, goodreads, Amazon and writer's blogs to spread the word of her e-books should read as book promotion 101.

Not bad when you consider she started with a love of writing, but her self-publishing success was spurred by the desire to earn a couple hundred dollars to go see the Jim Henson exhibit coming to Chicago.

Check out her article here, it is genuinely interesting and a good read.



Edit:  After reading more on Amanda, I found an informative article by Nathan Bransford (most of you should know him, if not bookmark his blog now!).  He talks about Amanda's success and the breakdown of traditional vs. agency e-book vs. self-published e-book.  You can read his appraisal here.