Richard Phillips Rho Agenda Blog

An Independent Author’s Path to Publishing Success on the Kindle January 22, 2013

Since a number of readers have asked me about my initial experience publishing for the Kindle as an independent author, I decided to repost an article from April of 2012 where I discuss my experiences prior to signing with 47North.

As most of you know, I originally self-published the first two novels of my Rho Agenda trilogy, so I will begin with my experiences there.  A year ago, I gave a talk to the Arizona Authors Association about the daunting path independent authors  face in trying to bring their work to a broad readership and why I believe self publishing for the Amazon kindle offers the first significant break from that catch 22.

When I finished writing The Second Ship, my first Rho Agenda Novel, I encountered the typical obstacles independent authors face.   You can’t get your books in bookstores, other than a few local stores, without a major traditional publisher.  You can’t get a major publisher without an agent with a working relationship with that publisher.  When you try to get an agent, your manuscript is buried in tens of thousands of other submissions to that agency.  You might get lucky in this process and have a great agent read your work and like it, but most likely you’ll never make it past the electronic trash receptacle.

After beating my head against that wall, I decided to try self-publishing on the kindle, publishing The Second Ship and Immune for the eBook reader.  At first, I sold only a few copies per month, but that continued to rise and as it did, something happened that I believe is due to the advantages only publishing for the Amazon Kindle offers authors, a categorization system that helps people find works by new authors.  My books began to break into the top 100 bestsellers in a couple of the sub categories under science fiction, specifically the techno-thriller and high-tech sci-fi categories.   When that happened, a lot more people started finding my novels and they continued to rise in those best seller lists.

As The Second Ship and Immune broke into the top ten in those sci-fi subcategories, they also broke into the top one hundred best sellers in the larger Science Fiction category for the kindle, followed by an appearance in the top 100 best sellers in Science Fiction on all of Amazon.  Once again, this brought a lot of new readers, such that in January of 2011 I found myself with the #1 and #2 bestsellers in the broader Science Fiction and Fantasy category on Amazon.com.

With the draft of my third book in The Rho Agenda trilogy complete in February of 2011, I had a difficult decision to make.  Should I continue to utilize the approach that had been so successful or should I try again for an agent with big connections to the publishing industry?  There are costs with making that change: I would have to give up control of the publishing schedule, I would have to take a much smaller percentage of royalties than the 70 percent Amazon pays kindle direct publishers like myself, and I would have to pay a percentage of those royalties to my agent.  On the plus side, the traditional arrangement offered me much broader distribution channels, a world-class editing staff, some of whom had New York Times bestsellers of their own, and a world-class marketing platform.  After weighing my options, I selected the traditional route to have a chance at bringing my novels to a much larger international market and elected to sign on with a well-known literary agency, Janklow & Nesbit, who were now interested in representing me.

Then the waiting game began as my agent pitched the trilogy to multiple publishing houses, reaching agreement in principle with 47 North and then waiting again as the attorneys worked out the fine details of the agreement.  This culminated with me signing with 47 North in March 2012, granting them the rights to publish the entire Rho Agenda trilogy in print, eBook, and audiobook formats in the U.S. and internationally.

This brings me back to the topic I began this article discussing: Is there a successful publishing path an independent author can take, other than relying solely on luck?  I believe there is.  Even though I self-published in multiple eBook formats, publishing for the kindle was by far the most successful.  There are reasons why Amazon’s system works far better for independent authors.

#1 Amazon has a great system for allowing readers to find your eBooks, a system of categories and subcategories plus the biggest eBook marketplace in the world.  You may not be on any Barnes & Noble bookshelves but your work is on the shelf in the biggest bookstore in the world.

#2 It doesn’t cost you anything.  Authors just set up a kindle direct publishing account and enter some bank account information to let Amazon make direct deposits and you get paid two months after the month in which the sales occur.  You can track all your sales through Amazon’s online reports.

#3 It’s easy.  You can follow the online instructions for converting a Word document. Upload it.  Then use the available tools to preview how the book looks as an eBook.  Set your pricing, publish, and a couple of days later it shows up as available.  People worry about making mistakes, but don’t.  If you need to update something or change your pricing, you can do that at any time.  (NOTE: That doesn’t mean you don’t need to use the best editor you can afford before publication.)

#4 Through the free Kindle App, kindle books are available for almost every mobile or computing device.

If you’ve written a work of fiction or non-fiction, I encourage you to take the plunge and publish your work for the Amazon Kindle.

Best of luck to all of you who may be thinking about publishing your own works.

Richard