It’s been a big day for Amazon press releases. I suppose that the company is trying to snag as much publicity as possible in the run up to the launch of the Kindle Fire. But today Amazon announced that it has added three more authors to the “Kindle Million Club”, bringing the total of authors who’ve sold over one million e-books to 14.
The three new authors include David Baldacci, Stephenie Meyer, and self-publishing prodigy Amanda Hocking. (It’s a little odd Amazon’s waited this long; Hocking said she’d sold over 1 million e-books in March, but again, timing and publicity. It could also be that some of those million were sold elsewhere, but given that Amazon controls 80% of the self-publishing market, it couldn’t be that many.) Hocking becomes only the second self-publishing writer to sell a million, after John Locke. Amazon also noted that 12 Kindle Desktop Publishing authors have sold more than 200,000 books, and 30 have sold more than 100,000, though did not say who they were.
The thought occurs to me that this could be one of the last few times any mention of the “Kindle Million Club” really means anything—as inexpensive as Kindles are getting, and as many people as are buying them, before too long selling a million e-books will just be what bestselling writers do.
I’m fairly certain I saw her mention on her blog that her sales through Barnes are fairly strong with some titles selling as many or more than at Amazon.
These were Hocking books sold through Amazon. It’s quite possible she sold more than million in total by last winter but, cumulatively only at a million achieved through Amazon recently.
It’s notable that no one other ebook vendor has yet celebrated a million book sale by any author, nor have any publishers taken the bait for a couple of years.
And, if Amazon is being consistent, these are paid sales, not freebies. Otherwise, it would not surprise me to see Conan Doyle’s name up in lights by now.