Self-Publishing Success Story: Adam Croft

British Author Adam Croft is considered to be one of the most successful self-published crime fiction authors in the world. Hailing from Bedfordshire in England, Croft started out writing from a spare room at home, completing his first novel, Too Close for Comfort, in 2011.

Despite a slow start, his book then rocketed, allowing him to pay his mortgage off. By 2015, his worldwide best seller Her Last Tomorrow concreted his career, with Thomas & Mercer, an imprint of Amazon Publishing, snapping him up. It became one of the best sellers of the year.

His Knight & Culverhouse crime thriller series has sold over a quarter of a million; the box set even knocked JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child off the number one spot in Canada in 2016, often overtaking her as the most widely read author in Amazon’s lists.

As for how he did it, Adam said in an AMA with The Guardian that he uses ads to sell books. “I’ve used an enormous range of audiences. I’ve spent six figures on Facebook advertising over the past few months and have something like 20 or 30 audiences running at any given time.” His tips to authors include, “Write more books, get yourself a mailing list set up and power it with reader magnets and other offers, then take a look at boosting things with social media advertising.”

He also advises authors to spend time with editing and design, in a recent interview with Writers Online. “The covers are very important – they’re the first thing people tend to see. I put quite a lot of time and effort into that. The series have a very visual identity – almost a brand, really.”