Sunday, July 31, 2011

Preview of August

Hello to all. What I've been working on for the last week or so is to get some author interviews. Hopefully, I can get some in August. Plus, the July Bestseller list by the 15th and whatever encouraging words I can find.


To have the honor and pleasure of creating the written word. https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jaz1181

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Independent Author Sells 1 Million Books

Have you heard? Independent author John Locke has sold 1 million e-books for the Kindle. I heard that and was impressed. In doing so, he becomes the eighth author to do it, and the first independent one.

Take encouragement fellow authors, because if he can write and sell that number of books that we can too. No longer should independent authors feel ashamed of publishing in that manner. We can and are making headlines with what we are writing. Go us!!!

To have the honor and pleasure of creating the written word. https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jaz1181

Friday, July 15, 2011

June 2011 Bestseller List

Unfortunately, for the debut list I have no books to add. I understand if some of you may be skeptical. So, what I will do instead is share what I sold during June. I sold two books, one each of my short stories. I'm hoping July will be a better month. I'm also hoping that there will be someone else's books I can report on for July as well.

Happy Selling!!!

To have the honor and pleasure of creating the written word. https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jaz1181

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Cool Indie Author Discovery

When I started this blog, I created a Google Alert for Independent Author query. I had gotten a few links that didn't really yield much until yesterday. The website I found was for an Independent Authors' Review. People can submit their books and they receive a grade based on the quality of their work.

 At first I was excited, yay something exclusively for independent authors. However, after further looking at the site they only put up one submission at a time. The other concern I have is how much traffic do they get. But, on the other hand if we all give effort to visiting then their site becomes more for everyone.

I hope I keep finding good stuff for us, to promote us.

To have the honor and pleasure of creating the written word. https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jaz1181

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Very Interesting Research

I'm still researching Indie author sales, reading Google alerts. I came across a very interesting post, discussing Amanda Hocking and her sudden rise to Indie Author fame, but also among that post was a list of other authors like Stephen Leather and Selena Kitt. The post gave how many book sales for the month of  December 2010 and I was blown away. So I followed the link to the monthly sales report and came across a guest blog post by author Michael Sullivan's wife Robin. In the post she breaks down exactly how much they have made. Here's the link http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/01/guest-post-by-robin-sullivan.html

Everything these authors have in common is they sell on Amazon Kindle. As of this posting, there is a deal in the works with Smashwords and Amazon but nothing for time frame for the linkage. Do you readers post separately on Amazon? Has it in fact increased your sales to do so? I'm rather curious to find out the answer.

To have the honor and pleasure of creating the written word. https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jaz1181

Sunday, July 3, 2011

This is an Experiment

A couple months ago I published my first two short stories using an independent publisher Smashwords. I was so excited at being finally being a published author. Lately I have been looking for a way to track how my sales are doing compared to other indie authors, so I tried Googling it. There was nothing out there, unless you sell at Amazon or you want to pay someone a ton of money. An idea started to form in my brain, what if there were an Indie author Bestseller list, created and updated by and for indie authors.

So this is the experiment, send me the title, author, and how many sales each month either by comment or by email. I will formulate the list and by the 15th of each month I will post the list. Along the way I will also post other news and interviews from indie authors.

I look forward to hearing from you and together we can inspire the world.