News

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.

Very interesting development.

With big publishing buying only the crème de la crème of books, and more authors turning to self-publishing, many literary agents are getting squeezed right out of the middle.

But some savvy agents are acting as literary consultants to help their authors self-publish, a role that offers up new opportunities and challenges for everybody in the industry.

I talked with three agents about their experiments to serve authors by widening their middle ground.

Ted Weinstein (left), a San Francisco-based agent who represents non-fiction authors, said that self-publishing “has added one more serious option for my clients

I’m not one to dance on the grave of big publishing (even if it’s never been very friendly to me) but, man, this can’t be good news for the future of traditional publishing.  Hocking and Barry Eisler were just the beginning.

“I’m more excited than I’ve ever been,” says New York Times bestselling author Bob Mayer, who wrote in a recent blog post about plunging into self-publishing and reissuing his defunct titles as e-books. The former Green Beret wrote the first of 40 military thrillers and historical novels in 1991, which he says have sold more than 4 million

Via the Smashwords blog:

Smashwords books are coming to an app store near you.

Today we announced an agreement with ScrollMotion that will transform over 33,000 Smashwords Premium Catalog ebooks into individual mobile apps for distribution to the largest app marketplaces for smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices.

The relationship will gain Smashwords authors and publishers free entry into the app marketplaces for Apple, Android, Windows Phone 7 and WebOS.

Our partnership with ScrollMotion expands the distribution of our books to the largest, fastest growing app marketplaces, and will enable Smashwords authors and publishers to reach new readers.