eBook author 100,000 copies and counting

Amanda Hocking is just 26, and she's already making a killing as a best-selling author. But it's not the New York Times list she's topping, rather she is the number one e-book author in the Kindle store.
Hocking, who has self-published nine books, sells more than 100,000 copies of those texts every month, Novelr said. Her books range in price from $0.99-$2.99. All of her books are available in e-book form and paperback, Hocking said on her blog.

Novelr said the Kindle Store can be particularly lucrative, allowing authors to keep 70 percent of the profits. The traditional publishing model is the opposite of this: publishers generally take 70 percent, leaving the remaining 30 percent of sales to the author.

"There is no traditional publisher in the world right now that can offer Amanda Hocking terms that are better than what she's currently getting, right now on the Kindle store, all her own," said a publisher cited in the Novelr piece.

But Hocking has never been traditionally published. She's only been self-publishing for about a year, too. Since she started selling her books last April, Hocking said she's sold more than 900,000 copies of nine different books.

Amazon isn't the only company to offer a self-publishing platform. Barnes & Noble launched PubIt this fall, but the terms aren't quite as competitive as Amazon's pricing. Authors get between 40 and 65 percent of the profits, depending on the book price. Borders' BookBrewer platform promises authors "95-100 percent of post-retailer royalties." Apple and Sony also offer self-publishing platforms for ebooks.

Earlier today, meanwhile, Random House announced that it will join the other "big six" publishers in adopting an agency model for e-books, paving the way for inclusion in the Apple iBookstore.