Success on Amazon & the Kindle case study

Carrying on with the theme of proving you have an audience for your book before trying to get a traditional publisher interested ie. going down the self publishing route first, here's an inspiring story that it really can work:

In August 2011 I found myself reading about Louise Voss who put her novel on the Kindle for 96p and landed a six-figure, four-book deal with HarperFiction. 

At the time I worked out she was making the same amount per eBook as I was - and mine was 5 times the price! 

As a result of the deal, her eBook would now be printed and stocked in book shops in the traditional way. 

She promoted it through social networking and by asking independent reviewers (AKA Indie reviewers who specialise in reviewing self published material) to write about it online.

Entering the Amazon Top 100 UK downloads must have been a thrill, but she built on that momentum and quickly shot to the top of the Amazon Kindle and Amazon Fiction charts.

The book sold 50,000 copies and stayed at the number one UK download spot for the whole of June.

It didn't cost her anything to load up the book on Amazon. All she paid for was an image on the front cover.

She made around £20,000 on the combined sales of her first novel and second novel using this method. Not bad going at all!