Konrath’s Kindle Success

Curious about the sales of self-published books? Wonder about the effectiveness of different ebook marketers? Good luck, because that kind of information is seldom made public. Whenever somebody pulls back the curtain that’s news in its own right.

Thriller author Joe Konrath told readers of his blog that he sold 5,850 ebooks and made over $4200 on Kindle in March 2010. And later this year he expects to be doing a lot better:

In June, Amazon is switching to the agency model, which means ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99 will earn the author a 70% royalty, minus a 6 cent delivery fee. Instead of making 70 cents per ebook sale like I’m currently doing, I can make $2.04 per sale.

Konrath also speculates about selling a book to a conventional publisher but holding back the ebook rights.

“This is a very interesting blog post,” says Francis Hamit. “My own results with e-books have not been anywhere near this, but Mr. Konrath obviously has a following.  I will have to think anew on this.  My concern is that a lot of people are going to jump in and expect similar results but miss the fact that he is probably in the levels of what makes a “best seller” in volume sales in this niche.  However his points about keeping the rights and the impact of that on the bottom line are compelling and a real argument in favor of self-publishing.”

[Thanks to Francis Hamit for the story.]