I’m happy to announce a June list of top self-published books in Kindle Store.
2011 is a breakthrough year for self-publishing. Amanda Hocking became a first well-known self-publisher. John Locke is a first self-published author to join the Kindle Million Club.
Self-publishing is about to become a serious part of digital publishing landscape and it’s good to devote as much attention as possible to embrace it and highlight its best qualities.
The purpose of our lists with top self-published books is to monitor the development of self-publishing and spot major trends, but most importantly – to help discover new self-published titles and their authors.
I’d like the lists to be a useful source of information and will improve them over time. Major change in comparison to April is how lists will be created. Since this edition instead of collecting data from a current ranking (which is being updated every hour), I will use monthly lists, which are displayed in Kindle Store’s Bestsellers Archive. Thanks to that a more representative overview can be achieved.
The data set consists of two tables. First one is a 2011 summary, where all major facts and figures are compared for the analyzed months up to date. So, below you’ll see a comparison of April and June.
The second table is a list of all self-published titles in June’s Top 100 list. You’ll see a position of a book in June as well as in a whole 2011 list.
Via Ebook Friendly
Summer Secrets may have been self-published in the kindle version but it is not a self-published book.
Self-publishing has begun to explode! It is estimated that only 5% of the millions of books self-published are worth at readers time and money. At B.R.A.G.Medallion we are searching for those gems and giving them the recognition they deserve. We hope to become the recognized symbol of worthy self published books. Please take a moment and see what we are doing for self-publishing. We would love to hear from you!
Geri
geri: “It is estimated that only 5% of the millions of books self-published are worth at readers time and money.”
And who is the numbskull that made this ‘estimate’ ?
“These books are then read and evaluated by members drawn from our reader group. ”
With respect … just another subjective opinion based review. Utterly worthless in my view.
Howard- thank you for your response
If you have read as many self-published books as we have, you would agree that a great many are poorly conceived and badly edited- a great many!
Our readers choose books in a genre they prefer and after a significant number unanimously agree this is a book they would recommend to their friends, it is recognized with our medallion. We do not say that all the books we read are not interesting, but not many can impress or please everyone in a group. Those that do deserve to be recognized, in our humble opinion. We have no limit on the number of books we find worthy of a readers time or money and we do not offer a critique. We are avid readers who love books and feel that getting any group to unanimously agree on anything is significant!
If you feel a review given by one person more meaningful, I respect you opinion. Many of our readers are reviewers and bloggers who are pleased to honor books in this way
I suppose this means you would have no interests in joining our reading team or having your book added to our reading list?
Respectfully
Geri
Geri – yes I was opinionated and perhaps a little aggressive, and I appreciate your calm response 😉 I suppose my irritation showed.
That is because I think a) there is far too much snobbery going on wrt self publishing and b) while I agree fully that many are of poor standard, I still believe it is misguided and grossly inaccurate to quote a number of 5%, most especially without any real, object, criteria or analysis. The problem finding good books is well known and easy to identify without giving in to such exaggeration. Imho of course.
In your site’s description it doesn’t mention how many members of your group have to vote yes to a title, and could easily have been interpreted as only one. I take it now that it is more than one.
My ‘utterly worthless’ comment seems harsh but I stand by it. Not that the opinions of your readers are worthless ‘per se’. Only that they are worthless to readers looking for titles that they will like.
No reader looks for a title that is ‘well written’, or ‘well edited’. Yes they would like that to be a minimum requirement, but it is not high in their list of desires for a title they plan to invest many precious hours of their lives in. In my view they want to maximise the chances that they will actually enjoy the title ! a very different thing. And though your service may be said to be at least filtering out the badly written and badly edited, I would suggest that that can easily be achieved by reading the samples that are available before buying. I have found it an easy and successful filer myself.
I throw my hat in the ring of the model being adopted by what I all ‘social reading sites’. Sites where individual readers share the names of titles they have read and really enjoyed, and those not enjoyed, with other readers. By doing so other readers can identify each other based on their common tastes, facilitating those readers to ‘mine’ each other’s libraries as it were.
The ingredient that is valued is therefore taste driven, not standard driven. There is, imho, a fundamental and important distinction.
I am sure your site and similar sites will make progress and I wish you all the best. But I really believe that the social reading sites will ultimately be the big winners. Those and individual reader/reviewers. The common theme being individual tastes, not group tastes or group standard setting.