Locke Cracks Million Mark

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Amazon announced today that John Locke has become the first self-published author to sell one million ebooks on the Kindle, joining a very select group: Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Charlaine Harris, Nora Roberts and Suzanne Collins. 

“Kindle Direct Publishing has provided an opportunity for independent authors to compete on a level playing field with the giants of the book selling industry,” said John Locke. “Not only did KDP give me a chance, they helped at every turn. Quite simply, KDP is the greatest friend an author can have.”  

“It’s so exciting that self-publishing has allowed John Locke to achieve a milestone like this,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content.  “We’re excited to see Kindle Direct Publishing succeeding for both authors and customers and are proud to welcome him to the Kindle Million Club.” 

John Locke, of Louisville, KY., is the internationally bestselling author of nine novels including "Vegas Moon,” "Wish List,” "A Girl Like You,” "Follow the Stone,” "Don't Poke the Bear!" and the New York Times bestselling eBook, "Saving Rachel." Locke's latest book, "How I sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months," is a how-to marketing guide for self-published authors.

Hocking on Hocking

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There's a great interview with self-publishing superstar Amanda Hocking in the New York Times today. She comes across as very natural, likeable, and surprisingly level-headed about her success, which came to her surprisingly fast once she put her books on Amazon:

…Hocking uploaded “My Blood Approves” to Amazon and, about a month later, to Smashwords, a service that makes her books compatible not only with the Nook but also with less popular devices like BeBook and Kobo. (When, in October 2010, it became possible to self-publish directly on Barnes & Noble’s site for the Nook, she did so.) It’s a surprisingly simple process in each case — much like signing up for Facebook. She took the e-leap because she thought that even if she sold her vampire books, there was going to be a reaction against them before they made it into stores.

The first day, she sold five books. The next, five more. “I took screen shots a lot,” she said. Then she uploaded another novel and sold a total of 36 books one day in May. “It was like: 36 books? It’s astounding. I’m taking over the world.”

Soon she started selling hundreds of books a day. That June, she sold 6,000 books; that July 10,000. “And then it started to explode. In January, it was over 100,000.” Today, she sells 9,000 books a day.

Hocking is at a loss to explain the phenomenon. “I’ve seen other authors do the exact same things I have, similar genre, similar prices” — like many self-published authors, she prices her books radically below what traditional publishers charge; typically hers cost between 99 cents and $2.99 — “and they have multiple books out. And they all have good covers. And they’re selling reasonably well, but they’re not selling nearly as well as I am.”

The problem is, now everybody thinks they can be Hocking…or John  Locke…and don't seem to realize that they are exceptional cases. 

Rerun: 25 Random Things About Me

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(From January 2009) 

I've lost count of how many people have tagged me for this "25 Random Facts About Me" meme. So here goes:

Chevy_chevette_red_1979 1. When I was a pre-schooler in Oakland CA, I ran away from home, showed up at the door of the Mormon temple, and asked if Shirley could come out to play.

2. I'm a Lee Hazlewood fan.

3. I had a girlfriend who was an editorial assistant at Playgirl. I honed my skills writing sex scenes by writing fake "Letters to the Editor" for $25 each. 

4. My favorite BBQ place is It's In the Sauce in Ventura, Ca. 

5. When I'm sick, I like to lie in bed and watch old episodes of "Gunsmoke."

6. I wrote my first novel when I was ten. It was about a superspy from the future who was born in an underwater sperm bank. I don't know why it was underwater, or how you made deposits, but I thought it was pretty cool.

7. I love Nacho Cheese Doritos.

8. My favorite James Bond movie is "Goldfinger." 

9. I've broken all but one limb…so far.

10. When I was five or six, I used to tell people my name was "Lee Beaudine." I don't know why. Lee_hazlewood

11. When I was a kid, I once threatened to send my little sister Karen to prison for picking apart my Nerf ball. She was so terrified that she gave me all the money in her piggy bank to buy her freedom. I still feel guilty about that. 

12. My middle name is Brian. 

13. The ugliest city I have ever been to is El Paso, TX. 

14. Until I was about 25, I spent two weeks every summer at Loon Lake, Washington. 

15. I love the theme to "It Takes a Thief" but I can't hum it. 

16. I had a crush on Linda Carter when I was a kid. She was my Wonder Woman. 

17. I think Harry Whittington is one of the great, unappreciated authors of noir. 

18. When I was a kid, I used to collect Wacky Packs. I thought the cards were hilarious. 

19. One of my all-time favorite books is "Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry. 

20. I've seen Roger Moore naked. 

21. I like to read Motor Trend and the National Inquirer on airplanes. This embarrasses my wife. 

22. I can't spell marriage, similar, or envelope. 

23. I wrote two episodes of "The New Adventures of Flipper." 

24. I once flagged down a cop on Jefferson Blvd. to alert him that a homeless man was "playing a twisted game of Russian roulette" by running into traffic. The cop actually asked me to repeat that without imitating the ABC announcer's voice. 

25. I owned a Chevy Chevette.

Tsunami of Swill Makes News

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The Los Angeles Times reports today about something I've been talking about for months…the tsunami of self-published swill washing over Amazon. The article refers to bad self-published books, but mostly discusses rip-offs of other people's work and books cobbled together from public domain sources.

Spam has hit the Kindle, clogging Amazon.com Inc.'s top-selling e-reader with material that is far from being book-worthy and threatening to undermine the company's entry into publishing.

Thousands of digital books, called e-books, are being published through Amazon's self-publishing system each month. Many are not written in the traditional sense.

[…]These e-books are listed for sale — often at 99 cents — alongside more traditional books on Amazon's website, forcing readers to plow through many more titles to find what they want. Aspiring spammers can even buy a DVD box set called Autopilot Kindle Cash that claims to teach people how to publish 10 to 20 new Kindle books a day without writing a word.

This new phenomenon represents the dark side of an online revolution that's turning the traditional publishing industry on its head by giving authors new ways to access readers directly.

[…]In 2010, almost 2.8 million nontraditional books, including e-books, were published in the United States, while just more than 316,000 traditional books came out. That compares with 1.33 million nontraditional books and 302,000 conventional books in 2009, said Albert Greco, a publishing industry expert at Fordham University's business school. In 2002, fewer than 33,000 nontraditional books were published, whereas more than 215,000 traditional books came out in the United States, Greco noted.

"This is a staggering increase. It's mind-boggling," Greco said. "On the positive side, this is helping an awful lot of people who wrote books and could not get them published in the traditional way through agents."

But Greco listed downsides. One problem is that authors must compete for readers with a lot more books — many of which "probably never should have seen the light of day," he said.

The Mail I Get

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Technically, this one didn't come to me, but was about me, so I think it counts. It's mail that my brother Tod got from a fan of mine:

Hey Todd, I am running a contest on my facebook page for a shopping deal I made at the store today! ( I bought a gallon of milk, hemorrhoid wipes and candy, it cost 29 cents) Anyways, would you like to be the judge? I was thinking the prize would be a Mr. Monk book by your brother, I will buy it at the local book store. I think it might be fun to see what creative responses we get. Also, you don't think that your brother Lee would be mad it I gave a Mr. Monk book as a prize do you?

To which Tod politely responded:

Uhm…I'm flattered (I think?) that you'd want me to judge this, but I just don't have the time, I'm afraid. As for the prize…well…I'm inclined to believe that no writer would really want his book being the prize for a bargain spree of candy and cheap hemorrhoid cream, so I'm going to go ahead and say use your best judgment on that one.

Shaken for Japan

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SHAKEN_FINAL_No_credit Naomi Hirahara, Brett Battles, Wendy Hornsby, Cara Black and Timothy Hallinan are just a few of the amazing authors who've contributed stories to SHAKEN: STORIES OF JAPAN, an ebook anthology that benefits the  Japan America Society of Southern California's Japan relief fund. You won't find an easier or more enjoyable way to contribute money to a great cause.

The Funny Side of Thomas Perry

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Big-Fish-Cover-1-Small If you're a regular reader of this blog, then you know I'm a huge Thomas Perry fan. We did a panel together at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and I used the opportunity to urged him to bring back his two hilarious, out-0f-print classics, BIG FISH and ISLAND, as ebooks. I'm thrilled to say that he cracked under my relentless nagging…both books are now available!  Here's the story on BIG FISH:

First published in 1985 and long out-of-print, Big Fish, one of Thomas Perry's most sought-after titles, is now available to readers in an e-book format. Powerfully-plotted and funny, Big Fish follows dangerous and mysterious Los Angeles entrepreneur Altmeyer, and his wife Rachel whose quiet lives in the Hollywood hills are disrupted when a multi-million dollar gunrunning deal goes bad. 

Under most circumstances, Altmeyer might be mildly amused by the audacity of the double-cross. But whoever cheated Altmeyer may also be planning to destroy the world. With so much at stake, Altmeyer and Rachel and their friend, super-agent to the stars Bucky Carmichael, set off on a perilous adventure in search of the identity of the Big Fish. What they find is shocking and horrifying and all too credible.

And here's the story on his classic ISLAND: Island-Cover-1-Small

Island, first published in 1987 and long out-of-print, one of Thomas Perry’s most sought-after titles, is now available to readers in e-book format. The riveting and entertaining thriller follows a husband-and-wife con team on the run from the Mob, a soldier of fortune between jobs, a two-bit operator with grandiose dreams of tribal dynasty, a sultry CIA operative with divided loyalties, and the most dazzling defector ever to hurl a split-fingered fastball––twentieth-century buccaneers who wash up on a tiny island in the Caribbean and turn it into a multinational cash machine—but then the shooting starts.

Somebody is trying to invade the island, and that somebody could be anybody: the CIA, NSC or IRS; the most powerful, corrupt bank in the U.S. or the South American cocaine mafia—or it could just be the Los Angeles incarnation of the devil himself, a shadowy figure with a checkered past named Fat Jimmy… 

If you are Thomas Perry fan, these classics are a must-buy…revealing a lighter side only hinted at in his string of thrillers. And if you've never read Perry before, these are a great place to start.