I received a pleasant surprise tonight when catching up on my blog reading: Mark Coker, founder of the e-book distribution service Smashwords (which I use to distribute my e-books to Kobo, Apple, and Sony) mentioned me as one of “50 indie authors to watch” on his latest blog post, which includes a presentation about the upheaval of the publishing industry. As more and more self-published authors like Amanda Hocking and J.A Konrath “break out” (Hocking is closing in on 1 million e-book sales!), and e-books garner a larger and larger share of the book market, we will reach a tipping point where big-name authors wonder why they’re giving publishers the lion’s share of their book proceeds. They’ll compare the 8%–17.5% royalties they get from legacy publishers to the 70% they can earn on their own. They’ll realize they can pay a fixed fee to skilled editors and cover designers and formatters, and retain artistic control, pricing flexibility, and the majority of the proceeds. And they’ll realize they can achieve worldwide distribution through Amazon and services like Smashwords, without their legacy publishers.
The authors on the list above have proven that legacy publishers are missing out on — actually, rejecting is the better word — some very talented authors. Do check out Mark’s blog post and presentation here, and check out Smashwords to find some very good, inexpensive, DRM-free e-books in multiple formats from some of these talented indie authors.
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