I was surprised to read the L.A. Times’ Jacket Copy column by Carolyn Kellogg about John Locke, the first self-published author to sell a million copies on Kindle. The headline is, “Independent author John Locke joins Amazon’s million-Kindle-seller club, but at what cost?”
She points out that Locke priced his novels at 99 cents and then writes, “What's significant in relation to Locke hitting the million-seller Kindle ebook mark is that it showcases that while choosing the Kindle Direct Publishing route removes agents and publishers from the equation, Locke makes less money with his 99-cent gambit than he would selling the same number of books with a traditional publisher.”
Yes, Ms Kellogg, but what’s even more significant is that it’s extremely doubtful that a million people would have been willing to buy this unknown’s books had they been priced like books from a traditional publisher. That’s true whether they were issued as paper books or as publisher's ebooks that usually sell for around $10. At 99 cents am I willing to take a chance on a new novelist? No problem. At $10 to $20? What do you think?
At what cost did Locke have his success? He made more than $350,000 in five months using his strategy. I’ll stick with his math over Ms. Kellogg’s any day.
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