Via press release:

Amazon.com today announced that John Locke has become the eighth author to sell over 1 million Kindle books, becoming the newest member of the “Kindle Million Club,” and the first independently published author to receive this distinction. As of yesterday, John Locke has sold 1,010,370 Kindle books using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Kindle Direct Publishing is a fast and easy way for publishers and authors to start selling to Kindle customers worldwide via Kindle, Kindle 3G, Kindle with Special Offers, Kindle 3G with Special Offers, Kindle DX, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac and Android-based devices. The Kindle Million Club recognizes authors whose books have sold over 1 million paid copies in the Kindle Store ( www.amazon.com/kindlestore ). Locke joins Stieg Larsson, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Suzanne Collins and Michael Connelly in the Kindle Million Club.

“It’s so exciting that self-publishing has allowed John Locke to achieve a milestone like this,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. “We’re happy to see Kindle Direct Publishing succeeding for both authors and customers and are proud to welcome him to the Kindle Million Club.”

From an interview on JA Konrath’s blog:

My background is niche marketing, where I built a successful business selling specialty insurance, and then another one, investing in specialty real estate. So the first time I saw the business model for selling eBooks on Kindle, my eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas. Why? Because Kindle doesn’t just level the playing field for self-published authors, it actually slants it in our favor.

Specifically, I saw that a self-published book could be offered on Kindle for 99 cents, and still turn a 35 cent profit. I was stunned! I walked around in a daze for, well, days, trying to explain to people what that meant. No one seemed impressed. To me it was like receiving the keys to the kingdom, and I immediately set a goal to become the world’s greatest 99-cent author.

Joe: Which, at this moment, you are. This fascinates me, because when Amazon began offering 70% to ebooks priced $2.99 and up, a lot of people considered staying at 99 cents to be slumming.

Which was naive. Coming from a legacy publishing background, I knew that 35% royalties were much better than anything the Big 6 offered. Even so, when I first got into this, I thought that cheap ebooks would be a loss lead, that would get people to read my more expensive books.

And yet, when I lowered the price of The List from $2.99 to 99 cents, I started selling 20x as many copies–about 800 a day. My loss lead became my biggest earner.

I guess there’s something about 99 cents…

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