Amanda Hocking books are already on my kindle, she was rec'd to me several weeks ago. I look forward to reading and will share my thoughts.
A year ago Amanda Hocking was working full-time at a job earning $18,000 a year. Now she’s writing and publishing her own ebooks, raking in close to $2 million.
Hocking, who lives in Austin, Minn., has sold more than 900,000 copies of her nine books, the first of which went on sale last April.
Her sales are so brisk (more than 450,000 in January alone), she may have broken the one-million mark by the time you read this.
Though she’s excited, “the numbers sort of seem unreal,” Hocking told the Star.
The 26-year-old, who specializes in paranormal fiction, wrote her first book at 17.
“It wasn’t very good,” she admits.
She kept writing, kept sending query letters to publishers, and kept getting nothing but rejection letters back.
After Switch was turned down (which has become her best-selling book, she says), Hocking looked into self-publishing.
On April 15, 2010, she published the first part of her My Blood Approves trilogy to the Kindle. She published the second book later that month.
“I was thinking maybe (it would sell) a few hundred copies. Maybe a thousand if I was lucky,” she says, enough to pay for a trip to Chicago later that year.
Sales were slow. Together, the two books sold 45 copies in two weeks. She released another book in May. That month she sold 624 books. Her cut: $326.
In June, she started sending her work to bloggers to review. And that’s when things began to take off. She sold more than 4,200 copies of the three books, making over $3,000 — more than enough for her October trip to Chicago.
Hocking prices her e-books low — four of her books are 99 cents each, and the rest are $2.99. (A typical Kindle book sells for $9.99.)
“I priced my books at what I would want to spend on an electronic book,” she says.
She admits the low prices might initially get readers to purchase a book of hers but feels it’s the quality of writing that makes readers come back.
Hocking is finding it hard to wrap her head around the money she’s making. She says she now makes more in a month than she has in the last four years combined.
Hocking used to work with people with disabilities before quitting last July.
“I feel guilty about it because I worked hard at my job,” she says. “I think it’s unfair that they (her former co-workers) make less doing something that’s more important.”
For now she’s trying to catch up on her bills and buy a vehicle “that’s running.” Otherwise, her life hasn’t changed much.
“I still live in the same town. I still have the same friends I’ve had for the last 15 or 20 years.”
This month, she received news that Canadian screenwriter Terri Tatchell, who co-wrote District 9 (for which she received an Oscar nomination), has optioned her Trylle trilogy (Switched, Torn and Ascend) and will write a screenplay based on them.
Hocking said the key word here is “optioned” – she’s aware nothing may come of it. However, she is “cautiously optimistic.”
As she puts it, “This is neat even if nothing else happens.”
No comments:
Post a Comment