Self-Publishing Success Stories (authors with more than 50,000 ebooks sold to date)

[Top100EbooksRank]

Update: 36 with more than 200,000 sold (found so far)
177 with more than 50,000 sold (found so far)


http://selfpublishingsuccessstories.blogspot.com/

The "200,000+ self-published ebooks sold" club:

Barbara Freethy - over 2 million ebooks sold (April 2012)
Amanda Hocking - 1,500,000 ebooks sold (December 2011)
John Locke- more than 1,100,000 eBooks sold in five months
Gemma Halliday - over 1 million self-published ebooks sold (March 2012)
Michael Prescott - more than 800,000 self-published ebooks sold (Dec 2011)
J.A. Konrath - more than 800,000 ebooks sold (April 2012)
Bella Andre - more than 700,000 books sold (May 2012)
Darcie Chan - 641,000 ebooks sold (May 2012)
Chris Culver - over 550,000 (Dec 2011)
Heather Killough-Walden - over 500,000 books sold (Dec 2011)
Selena Kitt - "With half a million ebooks sold in 2011 alone"
Stephen Leather - close to 500,000 books sold (Nov 2011)
CJ Lyons - almost 500,000 ebooks sold (Dec 2011)
J.R. Rain - more than 400,000 books sold (Sept 2011)
Bob Mayer - 347 sold in Jan to over 400,000 total sold by year's end (Dec 2011)
Rick Murcer - over 400,000 ebooks in one year (May 2012)
Tracey Garvis-Graves - sold more than 360,000 copies of her first novel
Tina Folsom - over 300,000 books sold (October 2011)
J Carson Black - more than 300,000 books sold (November 2011)
Terri Reid - 300,000 sold (May 2012)
Marie Force - 300,000+ sold (June 2012)
Liliana Hart - "my total sales for one year have now exceed 300,000 books (June 2012)
T.R. Ragan - 293,202 books sold (May 2012)
B.V. Larson - over 250,000 books sold (Dec 2011)
Kerry Wilkinson - more than 250,000 books sold (Feb 2012)
M. R. Mathias - "I'm up to nearly 250k (in just two years) (June 2012)
H.P. Mallory - more than 200,000 ebooks sold (July 2011)
Scott Nicholson - Just guessing, I'd put my worldwide sales total between 200k-250k
David Dalglish - more than 200,000 (May 2012)
Antoinette Stockenberg - total sales stand at 216,686 (June 2012) - private email
Cheryl Bolen - 200,000 sold (June 2012)
Jennifer Ashley/Ashley Gardner - 200,000 sold mark in early June 2012 - private email
Nick Spalding - "I'm lucky enough to be in the 200,000 + total sales club now (June 2012)"
Catherine Bybee - nearly 200,000 of the novel Wife By Wednesda (Jan 2012)
Jamie McGuire - hundreds of thousands of copies sold of Beautiful Disaster
Hugh Howey- crossed the 200,000 sold mark in June 2012

[GA Russell]

Can anyone tell me how many of those had enjoyed little or no publisher-backed book success before trying self-publishing?

[Top100EbooksRank]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Can anyone tell me how many of those had enjoyed little or no publisher-backed book success before trying self-publishing?

I put an asterisk * beside the name of authors who were traditionally published.
Of the 108 authors listed so far, maybe around 20-25% have been traditionally published.

The rest, self-publishing is their first time in publishing.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Top100EbooksRank

I put an asterisk * beside the name of authors who were traditionally published.
Of the 108 authors listed so far, maybe around 20-25% have been traditionally published.

The rest, self-publishing is their first time in publishing.

I'm not seeing any asterisks.

I know Amanda Hocking and John Locke were entirely self-published.

[Top100EbooksRank]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I'm not seeing any asterisks.

I know Amanda Hocking and John Locke were entirely self-published.

The asterisks are next to some of the 108 authors (see my signature).

I didn't put the asterisks next to the top 22.

[kennyc]

From The Atlantic:

After 'Fifty Shades of Grey,' What's Next for Self-Publishing?
By Sarah Fay
Apr 2 2012, 12:33 PM ET 14
The erotic novel became a New York Times bestseller without a traditional publisher, thanks to word of mouth. Can we expect more hits from nowhere?
First-time author E.L. James was offered $5 million dollars last month for the movie rights to her self-published novel, Fifty Shades of Grey. James, a former TV executive based in London, published the first installment of the Fifty Shades trilogy as an e-book. Without traditional distribution by a big-name publisher in the United States, the series caught on via word-of-mouth and Facebook. James then signed a seven-figure book deal with Vintage. Soon, Fifty Shades of Grey landed on the New York Times e-book and print bestseller lists. Of course, the hoopla surrounding Fifty Shades—and James—is unwarranted, at least from a literary perspective. The run-of-the-mill romance novel recounts the sexual relationship between ingénue Anastasia Steele and billionaire Christian Grey. It relies on a close first-person narrator (Anastasia Steele) and embarrassingly contrived descriptions, such as "My inner goddess is doing the dance of the seven veils."
Why, then, is there so much hype? Some ascribe it to the fact that the James's novel is essentially soft porn, which can sell anything from women's underwear to Fiats. And it's an e-book, which means that readers who might otherwise feel self-conscious about being seen buying or reading a trashy novel can do so relatively incognito. Others attribute it to the Ya-Ya phenomenon. Like Rebecca Wells's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Fifty Shades of Grey became a popular success because women told other women to read it. In email correspondence and in conversations at nail salons, women talked about the book that everyone was reading.
But the novel's success may also have something to do with our collective love of the underdog. The publishing history of Fifty Shades of Grey is a rags-to-riches story. James was an amateur who started the Fifty Shades trilogy as fan fiction, an online ritual in which avid readers rewrite their favorite novels with slight variations. James wrote the first book as an homage to Stephanie Meyers's young adult vampire series Twilight. There's little remarkable about one mega-selling series spawning another, but James was a self-published writer who became a monetary success seemingly by beating the American publishing system at its own game
….

Full article here:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...ishing/255338/

[dadioflex]

Do you have a list showing the best-selling genres? I see Epic fantasy is best-ranked by readers, but I wouldn't have expected it to make much of a dent in the sales charts.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Great. Now I'm depressed.

[russianfiction]

Could those authors personally tell their success stories in here?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I notice that the science fiction Top 100 list doesn't actually have 100 books (not even 60, in fact), which begs the question: How does an author get his books checked out by this site, to see if they can possibly fill out a few of those empty spaces?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I notice that the science fiction Top 100 list doesn't actually have 100 books (not even 60, in fact), which begs the question: How does an author get his books checked out by this site, to see if they can possibly fill out a few of those empty spaces?

By golly, what an excellent question!

[inkyness]

Just curious, where did you get the numbers from? And is there anywhere I can read the rest of the list?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by kennyc

By golly, what an excellent question!

Purely self-serving, of course... I could fill up ten of those spaces with just my stuff.

[Top100EbooksRank]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I notice that the science fiction Top 100 list doesn't actually have 100 books (not even 60, in fact), which begs the question: How does an author get his books checked out by this site, to see if they can possibly fill out a few of those empty spaces?

It's a work in progress.

Overtime, I will have more than 100 books for each category.


Amazon CEO on his annual letter to shareholders:
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012...olders-letter/

Kindle Direct Publishing has quickly taken on astonishing scale – more than a thousand KDP authors now each sell more than a thousand copies a month, some have already reached hundreds of thousands of sales, and two have already joined the Kindle Million Club. KDP is a big win for authors. Authors who use KDP get to keep their copyrights, keep their derivative rights, get to publish on their schedule – a typical delay in traditional publishing can be a year or more from the time the book is finished – and … saving the best for last … KDP authors can get paid royalties of 70%. The largest traditional publishers pay royalties of only 17.5% on ebooks (they pay 25% of 70% of the selling price which works out to be 17.5% of the selling price). The KDP royalty structure is completely transformative for authors. A typical selling price for a KDP book is a reader-friendly $2.99 – authors get approximately $2 of that! With the legacy royalty of 17.5%, the selling price would have to be $11.43 to yield the same $2 per unit royalty. I assure you that authors sell many, many more copies at $2.99 than they would at $11.43.

It was at 108 authors.
It now has 125 authors who sold more than 50,000. I will add more in the coming days.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Ah, so you're documenting Amazon's sales figures. Never mind, then.