The Word Cloud

John Locke made history (again) yesterday when he was announced as the first indie writer to sell 1 million Kindle Books. In case you are wondering about Amanda Hocking – who broke a million a while back – that was for e-books in all formats through all retailers.

On the same day, John Locke released his how-to book, How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months! which broke into the Top 100 items in the Kindle Store at some point yesterday evening. It’s now at #54.

Pretty impressive for a self-published non-fiction book, and pretty impressive for a self-help book, or for any book on writing/publishing/marketing.

Cynics will note that the announcement was made on the same day as the book release. Others have argued that Amanda Hocking must have also passed this milestone by now, but that Amazon aren’t as keen to trumpet her success since she turned down a trade deal with their publishing arm to sign with St. Martin’s Press.

Only Amanda Hocking and Amazon will know the truth on that score, and I’m sure her fans will be asking her the same question, and we may hear something on that soon.

In any event, none of that should detract from this amazing achievement from someone who made $47 in his first six months.

I bought his book yesterday (it’s priced at $4.99) and if you want my take on the contents, check out today's blog post:

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/john-locke-sells-a-million-books-then-tells-the-world-how-he-did-it/