So... You want to be Popular? (FINISHED)

Self Publishing: Amanda Hocking

Some thoughts: 

1) Why writing  everyday is so important:  Yes, you can write everyday.  If I don't write for seven days, It's difficult to produce a single chapter. But if I write everyday, it's easy to produce a four page chapter (which is only 2 pages on wattpad.com) in less than an hour.   So, I think it's easier to have ideas if you consisently challenging your mind everyday.  

2) Read. Read. Read.  I think it's important to read as much as you can.  Reading can spark ideas and chanel your inner thoughts.  But also I like to read articles about self-publication to try to stay motivated.   

3) Annoying habits:  I make mistakes. I'm human.  But, it's annoying when people point out a mistake I've already fixed.  I feel like they just read the previous  comments but they didn't actually  read the text.

But usually when someone points out a mistake, I'm more than happy to fix it.  

~*~ 

By 2008, Amanda Hocking had written dozens of novels. After she had recieved nearly fifty rejections by agents, she decided to self-publish. She wrote a paranormal romance in 15 days and then she began to self-publish her other titles. 

Her books began to sell. She was selling two books a day. One she began to promote her stories to blogs, she began to create an audience online.   By  the Next year, she had sold 100,00 copies.  

How she did it: Amanda Hocking didn't spend thousands on advertisement. In fact, she advertised most of novels for free through blogs.  She priced the first book of every series for 99 cents. She priced the other books for $2.99.  She was recieving a 35% rolaty for 88 cent books and a 70% royalty for books priced at 2.99. 

 In ten months, she had sold 1.5 million books.   After selling so many books on kindle, she signed a 2.2 million contract with a traditonal publisher. 

 Amanda Hocking was a savvy buissiness woman who knew how to market her books. When an interview asked why other self-published are not having the same success, she said  "A lot of authors tend to over market or they don’t take criticisms very well. They think that their book is perfect. They don’t want to get bogged down with editing or covers, because they think their book is so good. Or they market too hard. All they do is talk about their book and nobody wants to hear, ‘Buy my book.’ They want to have a conversation with you … Also, new writers respond to negative reviews and have great catastrophic meltdowns. You can’t respond to reviews at all except to say ‘thank you for reading the book.’ That’s the best you can do; otherwise, you’re just going to look bad even if the reviewer is totally out of line."    

Yeah,  I think It's going to be hard to hold my tongue when I read negative reviews on my book.  Amanda Hocking's success isn't the norm.  Critics like Jacquerie Hanna says that self-published writers have to work twice as hard to prove themseleves.  She also agrees with Amanda Hocking. Self published writers must be willingly to edit their work. 

Joy azmitia says: "Writers can't digital authors can’t upload an inferior book, price it at $0.99, and expect to sell a million copies or expect to get a book deal from a trade publisher. The digital book must be well-written and it has to have marketing behind it. " 

What do you think of this young writer's success? Let me know in the comments!

  

Cited page:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/12/amanda-hocking-self-publishing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Hocking