1 million Kindle books sold at 99c by self-published guy John Locke

He isn't an independent publisher. He's a self-publisher. There's a difference.

Is Secret 1 to publish under the name of a long-dead famous writer?
So that readers searching for the other see what comes up under yours?

Call me Hawthorne, Ishmael.

GameMasterNick said:

Is Secret 1 to publish under the name of a long-dead famous writer?
So that readers searching for the other see what comes up under yours?

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Is it wrong that I just think that is moderately clever, and not at all wrong?

Depends.

And here I thought he was just a Lost fan.

I imagined the scantily clad chicks on his covers also had something to do with it.

So, has anybody here read the books involved? They must at least be good.

Hang on, I thought Amanda Hocking had sold over a million?

GA [who has had conformation today that Amazon truly do suck.]

Manuel Royal said:

So, has anybody here read the books involved? They must at least be good.

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They must be at least amazing. A million people bought them, for fucksakes. Never read them personally, though.

Locke is a hell of a businessman. That handsome devil...

Capital said:

They must be at least amazing. A million people bought them, for fucksakes. Never read them personally, though.

Locke is a hell of a businessman. That handsome devil...

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No, a million people haven't bought them. A group of people bought 9 titles which amounted to a million sales.

Now the acid test would be, would they have paid £7.99 for them?

gothicangel said:

No, a million people haven't bought them. A group of people bought 9 titles which amounted to a million sales.

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True, but it's still amazing. Let's give credit where it's due.

@gothicangel

It was announced a few months back that Hocking had sold a million e-books, however that was across all formats and all retailers.

Locke is the first that has been officially announced to sell 1 million Kindle e-books.

There is some in the SP world who think Hocking must have already passed this milestone and that Amazon are not trumpeting her success because she turned them down to sign with St. Martins.

Only Amazon and Hocking will know how true that is and I imagine that will all come out in the wash.

As for whether he would have sold at higher price points, there are many who feel he left a lot of money on the table by not raising the price for his later books.

"Saving Rachel" is the book he promotes the heaviest as the introduction to his "world". That's sold around 300,000 copies.

About 100,000 readers stayed with him for the later books in the series, and that number is pretty constant (the readership for his two westerns is smaller), so I think that it's pretty clear that he could have raised the prices to $2.99 and kept most of those readers were loyal to the series.

A self-publisher doesn't need to sell at $7.99. They are making over 2 bucks a copy at $2.99. Could he have sold at $7.99 anyway? No idea, but that's quite a leap from 99c.

It will be interesting to see how many of Hocking's readers will shell out the higher prices that St. Martins will undoubtedly price her work at.

Capital said:

They must be at least amazing. A million people bought them, for fucksakes. Never read them personally, though.

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Buying the books because they're $.99 and you're trying to stock up your shiny new e-reader is vastly different from actually reading the books.

ChaosTitan said:

Buying the books because they're $.99 and you're trying to stock up your shiny new e-reader is vastly different from actually reading the books.

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Of course, there is no way of knowing whether they were actually read or not.

However, consistent sales figures in the last four books of the series would seem to suggest otherwise, as would the huge number of Amazon reviews (in the hundreds) that each title has gotten over the last six months or so.

Capital said:

They must be at least amazing. A million people bought them, for fucksakes. Never read them personally, though.

Locke is a hell of a businessman. That handsome devil...

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Indeed he is and fullofawesomesauce biz savvy, my hometown boy! Huzzah!

I think we should be able to acknowledge it was a significant achievement before immediately playing the grinch game of pointing out exactly what the achievement was or was not.

ChaosTitan said:

Buying the books because they're $.99 and you're trying to stock up your shiny new e-reader is vastly different from actually reading the books.

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Yeah, I tried to make my post as ambiguous as possible. I need a smiley indicating ambiguity.

I haven't read them. I actually checked them out because he writes my genre and I was curious, but personally the covers were a big enough turnoff for me that I don't plan to buy them now. I've actually wondered before if the naked legs earn him enough copies to make up for the people like me who roll their eyes at it, or if he'd have sold more copies if they were less...well, fan-servicey.

veinglory said:

I think we should be able to acknowledge it was a significant achievement before immediately playing the grinch game of pointing out exactly what the achievement was or was not.

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Agreed. That's more copies than most of us will see, if we're being realistic. He's been damned successful.

Just when we are kind of celebrating a self-publishing success, someone has to blunder in to reinforce the idea that self-publishers just don't know how to follow rules and like to spam....

(ETA: post moved to Self-Promotion.)

And, conveniently, he's also selling a book on how to use his system to sell millions of self-published books. Things that make you go hmmmm?

I downloaded his how-to book out of curiosity yesterday. Very interesting. I'm almost finished with it. Glitter aside, it's the best piece on how to market a book that I've read. Certainly the most believable. And easy to read and follow.

He had been trying unsuccessfully to sell his ebooks when he worked out his system. And things went through the roof as soon as he implemented it.

Not everyone will be able to do it. It's a lot of work.

Oh, are his novels good? I haven't read one, but he says not. Says he's not a good writer. But he has learned who his readers are and what they want. And that's what he writes.

Vaguely Piratical said:

Is it wrong that I just think that is moderately clever, and not at all wrong?

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Nah, and the next seven people to publish under "John Locke" will also think they're clever. So will the fifteen Mark Twains, the innumerable Bill Shakespeares and the occasional Plato. Why stop at dead authors? I hear the next thriller from J.A. Rowling might outsell the fantasies of J.K. Konrath.

I dunno, it reeks of "used car" shenanigans to me, but that appears to be his MO. I give him props for learning and tweaking the system, same as I give the "Four Hour Work Week" guy and others who have rocketed to stardom by careful application of unusual tactics.

It is the unusual, after all, that gives rise to success... cookie cutter requires big money behind it... unusual can slip through the cracks.