Received an update from Atilla in Hungary:
Hi, Paul,
Just want to let you know that my book (SLOW BUT GROWING – THE HUNGARIAN EBOOK MARKET) is a KDP Select title from now.
I am working on another material (an ebook on ebook and e-publishing stories from around world), hope that is going to do better than Slow But Growing which has sold about a dozen copies so far. I am disappointed about this but I find KDP Select a good initiative from Amazon so I enrolled my title.
But let me present you a German ebook author’s story who has sold hundreds of kindle copies in the German kindle market. This piece is written by me and hopefully you will find it interesting.
Kind regards,
Attila
GERMANY’SAMANDAHOCKING
US kindle author Amanda Hocking has become successful by writing and selling ebooks. Germany’s Emily Bold has become successful by writing and selling ebooks. Both authors are writing in the romance genre (Amanda Hocking is writing paranormal romance stories, while Emily is writing traditional romance novels).
So, yes, she’s Germany’s Amanda Hocking.
Emily was born in 1980 in Mittelfranken (Middle Franconia) and still lives there with her husband and two daughters.
Ever since her earliest youth, she has been addicted to historical romance. Among her favorites are Johanna Lindsey, Amanda Quick and Kinley MacGregor.
When Emily finished uploading his first book, Gefährliche Intrigen (Dangerous intrigue) to Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), she was very proud to have come so far. Later it made her even happier that her first books sold well.
A feeling grew in her. „Yes, that’s it. Now you’re an author” she said to herself.
Emily was initially ridiculed by her friends and heard comments like „O, have YOU written a book?” But she just did not care. She got herself a homepage and set up a Twitter account.
But has she really become an author? A writer? A writer must have a publisher and have written several books – and have already written a bestseller…
At the beginning nobody wanted to read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter was rejected. Did they become writers when began to write or when they were published by a publisher? Emily did not know. But after this train of thought she decided to be an author herself. An indie – an independent author. Emily knew the term indie had often been used with a negative connotation. She heard the allegations of poor quality of the text, formatting errors and lack of proof-reading – but are these allegations true for all indie authors? Readers can download free samples and decide if they buy an indie book or not. Emily did not argue – she just wrote her romance novels, uploaded them to Amazon’s KDP platform and waited for the results.
And the results were amazing!
Her ebooks climbed up the German kindle store’s sales – Emily was selling hundreds of ebooks. Not bad for an indie, right?
Even German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung published an article about Emily entitled „Die Unabhängigen” (The Independent). Then came an RTL interview…By the time Emily appeared on German televison, she had sold 3.000 ebooks.
So, after all, isn’t she Germany’s Amanda Hocking?
Self-published ebooks:
