If you've often thought of becoming an author, there is no better time in history than right now to become one. The reason is Amazon's Kindle. In December 2011 alone, CNET reported that Amazon sold 1,000,000 Kindles a week. Beside Kindle, most mobile devices, smartphones, iPads and other tablets are capable of reading and reviewing books on these devices.
There is a huge market that's consistently hungry for stuff to read. Kindle book sales currently outpace regular trade paperback book sales by 5-to-1 and that number is going up. The players in the wireless industry know that people no longer consider mobile devices as something that would be "nice to have" but as something that's needed. Which means that sales are only going to continue to grow for these devices.
CTIA, the wireless industry's nonprofit organization that's been around since 1984 keeps track of all the wireless statistics for the industry. Its research indicates that "mobile app downloads to increase to 25 billion by 2015, from only 2.6 billion in 2009." E-book reader applications are included in this number. Many authors that use Kindle and other such readers are experiencing phenomenal success with their books. And this is not relegated to How-To books. We're talking fiction authors. Kindle provides a reader that can be downloaded for your computer, Windows or Mac-based, without cost.
Take for instance the story of Amanda Hocking, a 26-year old paranormal romance fiction author, who in one month alone sold 450,000 copies of just one of her eBooks. Or the story of John Locke, who started marketing his Kindle books in October of 2010 and within six short months achieved over 1.1 million sales. Another well-known author, Barry Eisler, turned down a $ 500,000 publishing offer from a traditional publishing house to sell his own eBooks on Kindle.
So what is that saying to you? John Locke, the 1.1 million Kindle seller, who made it to the New York Times best-selling list with eBooks in 2011, used totally free methods to market his Kindle books. He, like the other authors mentioned here are fictitious authors – but this works for nonfiction authors as well.
E-Readers level the playing field for all authors. Traditional publishing houses are running scared, many of them are developing eBook chapters right now. When you publish your eBook on Amazon, you can receive up to 70 percent of the royalties for books valued at $ 2.99 or above. This is a huge royalty compared to traditional publishing where royalties typically range from 6 to 10 percent (if you're lucky) and you have to pay your agent from the money you make from these royalties. Publishing your eBook on Amazon does not require an agent, or anyone else for that matter, once you know the ins and outs of how to do it.
So if you've always had the dream of becoming a published author, the time is ripe for you to pursue that dream. And you can publish to Amazon from anywhere around the world. If you do not live in the United States, there are a few more hoops you have to jump through due to IRS tax laws, but it's not hard once you know what to do.
[ad_2]Source by Laurie Brenner
