Thriller Writer J.A. Konrath Makes $100k+ Selling Fiction on Amazon’s Kindle, Kindle Books Outsell iPad By 60 to 1
By Anna Johnson on September 1st, 2010Thriller writer J.A. Konrath says the ebooks he sells on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader outsell those on the Apple iPad by 60 to 1. While Konrath sells 200 ebooks a day on the Kindle, he sells just 100 a month on the iPad.
The Next Web’s Alex Wilhelm reckons Konrath’s sales are sufficiently big to be representative of ebook sales in general. Wilhelm’s view is that, for now at least, the 60:1 ratio reflects the general ratio of Kindle ebook sales to iPad ebook sales.
J.A. Konrath, meanwhile, is proving that authors can make a good living by publishing their own ebooks. Based on earning around $2 for every $2.99 ebook he sells on the Kindle, Konrath would be making $12,000 per month – or $144,000 per annum – in Kindle sales alone. Not bad. And certainly not bad when you consider how much tougher it would be to make that kind of money via traditional publishing.
As Wilhelm points out, if J.A. Konrath got the standard 8 percent royalty rate for mass market fiction, he might get 80 cents on the sale of a ten dollar paper book. If he sold the same number of paperbacks as he sells ebooks per year – 72,000 books – he would make just $57,600 per annum.
And guess what? There’s no guarantee that Konrath would sell as many (let alone more) paperbacks as he sells ebooks.
No wonder authors are increasingly embracing self-publishing on the Internet… and why traditional publishing houses are surely reconsidering their role in the book writing, publishing and marketing ecosystem.
Sources: Alex Wilhelm, “Kindle Outselling iBooks 60 To 1,” The Next Web, August 22nd, 2010, J.A. Konrath, “The Changing Face of Publishing,” A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, August 18, 2010
