Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
Howey? Isn't that the self-publishing maniac MobileRead keeps on talking about every time self-publishing comes up?
No, I can't see why anyone would ever have heard of him.  |
It didn't ring a bell. I also can't tell you who the top romance novelists are.
I would presume that he is considered one of the top selling indie authors? Scalzi is what I would consider a high mid-list genre author. That kind of tells you the difference in the upside of traditional publishing verse indie publishing, doesn't it. The top seller in 2014 was John Green's "The Fault in our Stars" from Penguin. It sold -
Trade - 1,800,000 +
Hardcover - 769,000 +
Movie tie-in - 923,000 +
total - 3,492,000 +
That doesn't include ebooks or audiobooks. Compare that to the 24K that Lock In sold in hard cover. It gives a bit of perspective.
It's great that some indie authors are seeing success and making lots of money, but were there any indies in the top 100 selling kindle books in 2014? I didn't see any. Perhaps there is, I didn't recognize all the names and books in the list. Andy Weir started as an indie, but like many if not most successful indies, he turned to a traditional publisher. There is a reason. The question shouldn't be why don't successful authors turn indie, it's why would they?