To Kindle or not to Kindle

I just received this email from ‘Xanares’, which is interesting and certainly food for a lot of thought:

Hey there Neal,

Thought you might be interested in this one. It’s about (an) independent writer’s success publishing novels on Amazon Kindle. It’s of course Vampire fiction (I know I know sigh), but it goes to tell that at least some parts of the writing industry are on their way towards the same business-idea that parts of the gaming industry have been playing with for a while now:

“Welcome to disruption. 26-year old Amanda Hocking is the best-selling “indie” writer on the Kindle store, meaning she doesn’t have a publishing deal, Novelr says.

And she shouldn’t. She gets to keep 70% of her book sales — and she sells around 100,000 copies per month. By comparison, it’s usually thought that it takes a few tens of thousands of copies sold in the first week to be a New York Times bestselling writer.”

Admittedly she’s selling some of her books for just $1 to $3 each but, if you average that then consider that percentage above, she gets more than I get on a damned paperback or even hardback. I will have to carefully consider any future contracts I sign, I think.

Xanares concludes his email with: For us old romantic book-sniffers it’s odd, but hey… science fiction is here.

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