Is Amanda Hocking the Future of Publishing?

If you haven’t heard of Amanda Hocking, you should listen up.  She is, according to her blog, a 26-year-old woman who lives in Austin, Minnesota, and she writes books in the fantasy genre.  What’s notable is that, of the nine books that she’s published, not one has been published traditionally.  She’s published them exclusively as e-books — that is, straight to the Kindle — and she sells them for $.99 or $2.99.

And she’s sold a million books.

And she just optioned off her trilogy to a movie producer.

She’s gotten some big press in the last couple days, after being linked to by Andrew Sullivan, and I expect that she’ll be on Colbert or 60 Minutes or something like that in the next couple weeks.

Yesterday, amidst all this buzz, Amanda wrote a really exceptional post about indy e-publishing, basically contradicting the perceptions that it’s a get-rich-quick scheme, that anyone can do it, and that she’s a publisher’s worst nightmare.  For instance, about the editing process, she writes,

There is so much stress in doing it all yourself. The editing is never good enough. And finding an editor isn’t as easy everyone thinks. People thinking an editor is just having someone read through it a few times, checking for basic grammar and spelling, and while that is part of it, it’s also much larger than that. It’s helping tighten up sentences, watching repeated phrases, helping with flow, etc.

And it is really, really hard (or at least, it has been for me) to find an editor that can do all that. My books have all been edited – several times, by dozens of people with varying backgrounds – and people still find errors.

I do know this, Amanda is at least an example of how it can be done.  Even reading her blog, it’s clear that she’s a good writer.  And I’m enough of a free-market Colbertian to believe that the market does reward quality (Celine Dion notwithstanding).

I also know this: I am very seriously considering going this route myself.  My dissertation, which will be complete by March 15, will likely be available exclusively as an e-book.  My future books may be as well, or at least they will be heavier on the e-book side than my backlist is.

Business Insider picked up this story, too, and wrote a quick list of how the approaching e-book tsunami might actually benefit publishers.  Here’s their pep talk for publishers:

• You now have infinite shelf space. Hundreds of thousands of books are published every year and that number is only going to go up. Before sales came down to the dozen titles that could grab shelf space in a handful of retailers. That’s gone now.
• Your books don’t cost anything to print. Print runs. Inventory. Pulping. Gone too.
• People are reading more than ever. Kindle owners buy 3X as many books as other people. The Kindle is arguably a superior reading experience to dead trees — it’s certainly a better purchasing experience. And for all the supposed death of books, with smartphones and computers, humans now spend more time reading (and writing) than at any time in human history.
• People are willing to buy books. Unlike music, we don’t think piracy will be a big problem for the book industry. The convenience of e-readers and mobile purchasing is too great.

via HEY PUBLISHERS: Here’s How To Survive (And Thrive) In The Coming Nuclear Winter.

UPDATE: Great article on Hocking in the Pioneer Press.