Independent author John Locke joins Amazon's million-Kindle-seller club, but at what cost?
Kentucky-based independent author John Locke has joined big-name writers Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins and Michael Connelly in the Kindle million-seller club. Only these eight authors have sold more than 1 million Kindle e-books through Amazon.
Locke, whose books appear on Amazon using Kindle Direct Publishing, is the first author without a major publisher to have achieved the Kindle million-seller mark.
But at what cost? Locke is the author of the Donovan Creed novels, a mystery-thriller series, all of which have been Kindle bestsellers. Each of those novels is priced at 99 cents when sold as a Kindle e-book (those that also are paperbacks retail for $8 to $15).
Kindle Direct Publishing authors can set their own Kindle e-book prices, and the price they set determines the royalty rates they receive. Books that are listed for $2.99 to $9.99 give the author a 70% royalty rate; books that cost either more or less get a royalty rate of just 35%. The lowest price at which an author can list a Kindle ebook is 99 cents.
Which means Locke receives slightly less than 35 cents per Kindle ebook he sells.
What's significant in relation to Locke hitting the million-seller Kindle ebook mark is that it showcases that while choosing the Kindle Direct Publishing route removes agents and publishers from the equation, Locke makes less money with his 99-cent gambit than he would selling the same number of books with a traditional publisher. And he puts a downward price pressure on Kindle e-books in the process.
Authors who have deals with traditional publishers, from someone just starting out to a bestseller like James Patterson, might expect to make anywhere from $2 to $4 per sale of a $20 hardcover sold in a bookstore. With e-books, whose retailers have fostered a new kind of revenue split between publisher and bookseller, some of the details are still being worked out. But in general, authors with major publishers stand to make a similar pecentage -- a $15 e-book brings them $1.50 to $3. Drop the price of the e-book to $9.99 and a traditional author might make about $1 to $2.
Which is not much. But it's still more than 35 cents.
Sure, Locke isn't hurting. If he sold a million Kindle e-books at 99 cents, he'd clear $346,500 -- nice work if you can get it. But if he were working with a traditional publisher, that $346,500 might be a lot closer to $1 million.
And in fact, Locke hasn't only sold his Kindle e-books for 99 cents -- that's just how he prices his novels. He has a nonfiction title that retails for $4.99: "How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!"
Which is another issue -- Locke's success notwithstanding, not everyone can sell 1 million e-books in five months. "In fact, more people will sell less than 100 copies of their books self-publishing than will sell 10,000 books," cautioned one observer. Who? None other than Amanda Hocking, who was the first self-published million-seller to make headlines.
-- Carolyn Kellogg
Photo: John Locke. Credit: Amazon.com