Amanda Hocking has sold over 900,000 books...

...since last April.

That's absolutely insane.

What's even more insane is she's completely self-published.

I haven't read any of the books (but I just might to see what the fuss is about), but from the descriptions, they're genre fiction. Now, that's not a pejorative; I like genre stuff. I say this because I continue to follow the self publishing thing with an eye toward going that route myself. But my finished novel is not genre fiction. It's literary fiction. If I had any proof that literary fiction could enjoy that kind of success, then I'd think about self-publishing even harder. Something tells me that it wouldn't be a bad idea to get out in front of the whole thing. Who knows.

Just for shits and giggles, I've copied in some sales numbers for ebook sales on Amazon for December. Very interesting.

These are DECEMBER sales figures for some indie authors. In other words, they account for only 31 days of sales.

Blake Crouch - 2500+
Nathan Lowell - 2500+
Beth Orsoff - 2500+
Sandra Edwards - 2500+
Vianka Van Bokkem - 2500+
Maria Hooley - 2500+
C.S. Marks - 2500+
Lee Goldberg - 2500+
Lexi Revellian - 4000+
Zoe Winters - 4000+
Aaron Patterson - 4000+
Bella Andre - 5000+
Imogen Rose - 5000+
Ellen Fisher - 5000+
Tina Folsom - 5000+
Terri Reid - 5000+
David Dalglish - 5000+
Scott Nicholson - 10,000+
J.A. Konrath 10,000+
Victorine Lieske - 10,000+
L.J. Sellers - 10,000+
Michael R. Sullivan - 10,000+
H.P. Mallory - 20,000+
Selena Kitt - 20,000+
Stephen Leather - 40,000+
Amanda Hocking - 100,000+

Part of me really wants to walk up to a publisher and invoke Amanda Hocking's name just to see if said publisher explodes.

Here's a link to her blog: http://amandahocking.blogspot.com/



What say you, writing friends? This could be the future staring us right in the face, n'est pas?

CDBaby gets into the DIY book business.

So now worlds collide and CDBaby has gotten into the DIY book biz with BookBaby. I use CDBaby to get my records onto the various digital stores and now it looks like they're providing a similar service for ebooks.

I don't know how their service compares or if they're a day late and a dollar short when dealing with outlets like lulu and CreateSpace, but this'll be something that I look into.

In other news, I have a new draft of the novel that's been streamlined in a few places and I've sent it out again. We shall see how that goes. I've made a pact to send it out to at least three or four places each week and if there's nothing going on by June, I'm going to do the DIY thing.

And I've also vowed to take the word self-published out of my vocabulary when I talk about this stuff. I like DIY or indie a lot better.

Here's a link to the bookbaby site if you want to check out what they're offering. http://stuffidontneed.blogspot.com/2011/01/cdbaby-gets-into-diy-book-business.html

I'll look at it more closely soon. If nothing else, the fact that they've jumped into the fray means someone outside the DIY pub industry is seeing potential here. Or am I wrong? Thoughts?

Update:  I just did a little more research (I looked at their splash page). They want $99 to distribute your book. Sounds like a crap deal to me.