The Basement got to Number 2 in the US Kindle store today - how brilliant is that?
Sadly it hasn't got much to do with me, it's more a reflection of Amazon's marketing power.
They cut the price to 99 cents and made it the Daily Kindle Deal which means it was massively promoted.
Over the space of a few hours it went from Number 60 to Number 2, just behind The Hunger Games.
Amazon did a similar deal with Joe Konrath and Blake Crouch's book Stirred last week.
The Basement has been out for a year now and never got higher than Number 2,000 while I was publishing it. But as soon as Amazon Encore took it over, it shot to the top of the charts. That's great news for me, but I don't think it bodes well for Indie authors. A lot is said about how Indie writers don't need publishers any more but in this case Amazon is acting as a publisher and they have achieved far more success in a few hours than I've achieved in a year. So next time someone tells you that publishing is dead you can take that with a pinch of salt. The publishing world is still going to be dominated by publishers, and as the eBook cake grows bigger, they will be taking a bigger share. That doesn't mean that independents won't still flourish, but it's going to be a much tougher market than it was a year ago.
Ah! The might of Amazon! ;-)
ReplyDeleteI think the difference is that Amazon is in the business to market and promote your book through their insane retail engine. They promote and sell all at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThe traditional publisher controlled the distribution of your book to a re-seller. Something that they had complete control over in the past.
Anyone with Print on Demand and an Amazon account has world wide distribution now. Publishers need to move towards selling instead of distributing. Imagine if Walmart promoted your print book instead of it just sitting on the shelf next to 1,000 other books.