Who Wants to Be the Next E-Book Millionaire?

The time is ripe to make your book idea a reality, but don’t clear any bookshelf space for that knockout business book or the witty novel with your name on it. The big money is in e-books.

It’s no secret that retail bookstores and books with bindings are seeing big challenges. Borders Group filed for Chapter 11 protection in February and is seeking to close about a third of its stores. But that's nothing compared with what has been announced in the bookselling industry in the last 24 hours.

• Kindle e-books are on fire. Amazon announced Thursday that its e-book sales for its Kindle e-book reader have surpassed both its hardcover and paperback sales. Since April 1, some 105 Kindle e-books have sold for every 100 print books, including hardcover and paperbacks for which there is no Kindle edition. Amazon, which excluded free Kindle e-books from that breakdown, says the e-books are selling at three times their rate during a comparable period in 2010.
• Bookselling titan Barnes & Noble might get bought. Liberty Media, which owns home shopping network QVC among other companies, made an offer Thursday to acquire a 70 percent stake in the struggling book company for $1.02 billion, reports the Wall Street Journal. That could give the chain the investment dollars it needs to delve further into digital. The bookseller, which competed with the Kindle via its own Nook e-reader, is expected to unveil a new e-reading device Tuesday.
• Waterstone bookstore chain sold in U.K. HMV Group, the largest retailer of DVDs and music in the United Kingdom, announced today that it is selling its financially ailing Waterstone book chain to billionaire Alexander Mamut for $86 million as it seeks to cut rising debt and stave off lenders, reports Bloomberg. It’s not clear what Mamut—who counts American-based blogging site LiveJournal.com among his holdings—plans to do with the chain, but given what's happening to brick-and-mortar stores, opening more of them is probably not in the cards.

Now, consider the story of Amanda Hocking, a 26-year-old self-published author of young-adult paranormal and urban fantasy e-books, nine in all, with a 10th e-book, Virtue, slated to come out on Memorial Day. She’s sold nearly one million copies of her e-books, bringing in $2 million. The three titles in her Trylle Trilogy (Switched, Torn, and Ascend) recently hit the top 50 of USA Today's Best-Selling Books list.

But it's her personal story that has turned Hocking into an indie heroine. Rejected by traditional publishing companies, the persistent scribe began selling her novels on online bookstores including Amazon and BarnesAndNoble.com.

Despite pricing her creative work at the type of prices one might find on the McDonald’s Dollar Menu—99 cents to $2.99 per download—the young writer, who hails from Austin, Minnesota, and wears a hoodie in one of her promotional shots, has made millions.

"I can't really say that I would have been more successful if I'd gone with a traditional publisher," Hocking said in a recent interview with USA Today. "But I know this is working really well for me."

Hocking said she aggressively promoted herself on her blog, as well as on Facebook and Twitter, and that word-of-mouth about her books, which are in that red-hot genre of vampires, trolls, and zombies helped her make money.

For every $2.99 book she sells, she keeps 70 percent, with the rest going to the online bookseller. For every 99-cent book she sells, her share is 30 percent.

But the latest chapter on Hocking, the author, beats it all. The New York publishing types that once snubbed her have been falling over themselves to claim her as one of their own. According to the New York Times, she signed a deal with St. Martin’s Press for $2 million to produce four books under its imprint in March.

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Teresa Novellino writes for Portfolio.com